> Between 2005 and 2016, the most recent full year of data, the company saw an 83 percent decrease in the number of incidents that resulted in days away, work restrictions or job transfers – to an all-time low of 1.55 incidents per 100 full-time North American employees.
I find it incredibly impressive for a manufacturer to achieve something like this.
I'm not sure how much to congratulate them, since 2005 is almost exactly when the cost of programmable robotic arms became far cheaper than the cost of worker injuries.
I've been working for automotive suppliers since 2006 and I've never seen a factory worker doing anything remotely strenuous or dangerous. Programmed robotic arms do almost literally anything involving lifting, and almost anything involving a dangerous tool or machine. Additionally, every workcenter is outfitted with lots of sensor-laden safety systems that all but ensure the operator is far away from anything that could hurt them. 99% of the accidents I see on reports involve ladders, box cutters, hi lo carts, etc.
It was an incredible contrast to tour the BMW factory in Munich in August, then the Tesla factory in Fremont in October. The BMW factory was highly automated, and the assembly line did so much for the humans -- positioning the cars in just the right ergonomic locations for humans to work on them. Meanwhile, over at Tesla, forklift drivers are crashing into things, dragging chunks of wood under their wheels, so much more manual labor, etc. I don't expect Tesla to be up the level of BMW; the volume isn't there to justify it. It's just really interesting.
I'm trying to think of when I would have seen BMW factory employees working overhead, and I just can't think of it. I wonder why Ford would even have tasks that require this rather than just rotate the assemblies being worked on.
I actually think it owes to the fact that it was never reasonable for any worker to work “overhead” all day, unassisted; the human body can’t take it.
Working with your arms outstretched in front of you, Minority-Report-style, has been determined to be not feasible due to fatigue, so how is working overhead reasonable? I’ve never been in a car factory or on an assembly line, but from an armchair it sounds bound to lead to a lot of strain.
Why not have workers lie on their backs on carts or something?
When you put effort into making a person's job better it not only reduces their actual injuries but improves their well being as they don't feel ignored. combine the two and the pay off is real.
So like a torque reaction arm[1], mounted on your back, that uses your own arm? In addition to the OP sidebar video, there are these[2]. They also make an "anchor it to something nearby" portable arm.
Quick question: how about exercise and prevention? Not saying the exoskeleton could be replaced by exercise, but simple scapular and general mobility exercises will do wonders to prevent this type of injury/fatigue/pain.
Because solving problems is seen as better. Fixing the root cause is less sexy and hard to motivate people. In this example getting people to do physical therapy or even daily exercise is not something that’ll get you a press release. I could be a bit biased tho. I’m a big proponent of doing Pilates or any whole body exercise regime
At this point I can't help but let my imagination loose. I assume it would be rather academic discussion, but anyway... Would that be possible, at current state of technology, to replace entire factory plant with robots? If so why no one is doing it? If not, what are we missing? What could be the implication of such work force shift?
It's more often a question of whether it's worth using a robot instead of humans. I'm pretty sure it's already possible to automate much more than what's already automated in a car production line. Sometimes, for a given task, it's way simpler to use a human worker than to design a state of the art robot for this one task.
What I found is that, in high volume auto plans, humans are used for tasks like pulling wiring harnesses into the vehicle (through grommets, etc), plugging in connectors, things like that. The major body work and positioning/lifting/welding/painting is done by robots, and often there are human-guided robots for difficult tasks such as lifting 100+lb seats into place in the chassis. The robot handles the weight, the human just guides the seat into place.
Tesla's likely behind virtually everyone in this regard just because their volume is so low. The factory is certainly not impressive in the way high-volume auto factories are.
While they don't mention it, the vest has neck support which probably holds the head when looking up. Not sure how well that works but maybe that's enough to reduce neck problems. In that case it'd be better than belay glasses, workers can probably work faster that way.
I was looking at the pictures thinking it would be a lot easier to turn the car on its side, so the bottom of the car is at a good working height directly in front of the worker and without the neck strain.
What do you do about the torque exerted through all the fasteners connecting the large masses mounted to the car that are designed to have the force directed vertically through the bottom of the car?
Turning the car on its side sounds like a good idea until you realized that, e.g., the seats can now twist the bottom of the body pan.
If I were working in a factory, I would probably consider it less safe to strap myself to a powerful piece of machinery that may (or may not) be under my control. That said, I'm sure they are taking safety very seriously.
The vest isn't powered. Rather, its goal is to absorb some of the force exerted on the wearer and transmit it to the ground (instead of the person's body).
A few months ago, I built a rudimentary unpowered exoskeleton similar to the Ekso models, and it did help with carrying heavy loads once I got past the initial awkwardness of wearing it.
"The non-powered vest offers protection and support against fatigue and injury by reducing the stress and strain"
Would love to see how this works and maintains an adequate range of motion so as to not get in the way. Seems like it adds rigidity so that the weight is shared by the exoskeleton.
The theory behind these devices is even minimal assistance over a long day makes a difference. Try holding your arms strait out for 10 seconds and it's easy, 10 minutes and it becomes really difficult.
Now picture something that reduces your load by 80% you still need to provide some upward assistance so lowering your arms is still effortless, but holding your arms out is also much less effort. For an easy example, sitting underwater provides this kind of support but it also clearly does not reduce range of motion.
Does that mean that lowering your arms with the vest becomes harder? In that case it'll probably take workers a while to build new muscles? Or how does the vest distinguish holding body weight vs the worker lowering their arms.
This gets complicated because you can vary the amount of support based on the angle the arms are at. Anyway, there is no need to account for extra weight simply supporting someone's arms can make a large difference. But, you get into a lot of trade offs.
I don't know...how much of the increase of productivity is a result of the workers themselves intrinsically increasing their productivity, versus some outside party increasing it through research and capital investment?
Let's say I own a lawn care business, and you gladly accept work raking lawns for $10/hr@8 hr days, and you can rake 2 acres per day(or, $40 per acre). If I decide to plunk down a bunch of money and buy a turbine leaf blower, and you can now do the same job on 6 acres per day, except using the leaf blower for 6 acres is much less physically exhausting than raking 2 acres of leaves, how much money should I as the business owner owe to you for my own investment into increasing your productivity?
Capital is usually what makes human labor more productive; we aren't getting smarter, faster, or stronger.
For example, if you work in IT you benefit from massive capital investments that researched, developed, and deployed every bit of technology you use, from 18th century research on electricity (and probably earlier research) to every component in your PC to C to the Internet to AI, to the technology used in the global supply chain that makes it all (to much, much more) ... Should you be paid as if you were utilizing no capital, and you were working in a cave by firelight with carbonized wood on the wall?
Almost all of anyone's productivity, I expect, is due to capital investment that they didn't make.
When viewed through the eyes of capitalism , the answer is 0.
When viewed through the eyes of the jewish religion for example, which says you need to give 1/7 or 1/10 of your income to the poor. So this number is now 3x.
It all depends on what moral system you view things through, and a moral system that encourage sharing of wealth seems like a good thing.
Yes, sort of. When someone gets workers comp, they get a reduced salary.. and that injury may also reduce their ability to work in the future.
So by reducing injuries, those employees receive higher pay (because they get their normal salary instead of the lesser workers comp pay), and they are able to work more years.
It's clever actually, taking attention from the question which was (total pay / time worked) to (pay rate * time worked). Most wouldn't notice, I'm sure, and it makes things look favourable - especially since your question was about the average worker, not the injured worker, i.e. the exceptional one.
It is higher pay to any worker that would have been injured without it. Once they reach that point in time when an injury would have occurred, they are then receiving more pay than they would have if the injury occurred.
We shouldn't stop the comparison of pay at the moment a person is injured. These are people, they don't stop existing the moment they aren't useful to a company. And an injury does effectively reduce their pay by preventing them from working, or forcing them to change careers.
This is a safety device, and no productivity improvements have been shown yet. So you wouldn't expect an outright increase in hourly wages. But an increase in working years without injury is a benefit to workers, and does increase their lifetime earnings.
That’s fucked up: “You weren’t completely maimed, so you get to make your regular crap wage instead of making even less while also rotting in a wheel chair.” Like, are you joking or do you really think that “not being disabled” counts as an increase in pay? It is Ford’s job to make sure no one gets hurt. Period. That it happens less is not some kind of reward or pay bump.
but they do get injured. And these workers are at quite a risk of being injured, which will reduce their pay and shorten their working life.. reducing their lifetime earnings. That's the reality of working in manufacturing today. To pretend otherwise is a fantasy.
So a device that reduces injuries, will enable them to work more years, and increase their lifetime earnings.
The downvotes are ill-informed, maybe its the tone. Yes more productivity should decrease labor demand ATBE, but labor economics literature typically emphasizes that standards of living can only increase in the long run if productivity increases. That implies real income gains generally.
But that discussion is irrelevant to this article — the point is that exoskeletons are cool.
Maybe inflation was a bad example, but my point is that expecting all productivity gains to translate into pay raises is ridiculous. To start with, the exoskeleton is a huge capital expense, which the employee is not paying.
A business is built on all of the technology and knowledge available in the world, and exists to add value to society. An employee doesn’t deserve some sort of “productivity benefit” because they are utilizing the same technologies as everyone else.
If you want profit in excess of what the market will pay for your skills then you need to take risk yourself - start a business and make as much profit (or loss) as you are capable of.
There is a section of society that advocates for making laws that artificially pay people more than they are worth by forcing business owners to pay above market wages. This will make employees artificially more expensive and encourage alternative mechanisms to reduce labor costs (automation / outsourcing).
In the best situation, there would be no minimum wage. Society could choose to top-up wages with whatever benefit they want (basic income perhaps) and let the market freely determine wages. The more you warp the free market, the more unintended consequences you have.
I understand the theories, but the real world doesn't operate that way; the market isn't free. Income depends to a significant degree on the ability to write the rules of the marketplace and labor law in your favor, and the resources to utilize those rules and laws (e.g., money and lawyers); workers don't have such influence and resources. Consider Uber and its non-employee employees, for example. It also depends to a great degree on who you know and who your parents were.
Also, I'll point out that a backup offensive lineman in the NFL, junior attorneys and investment bankers in NY, and many similarly situated people in Silicon Valley make more than the U.S. military officer in command of the entire Asia-Pacific region, many Nobel Prize winners, many doctors saving lives right now, not to mention social workers, teachers, diplomats, almost all scientists in academia, etc.
People are paid based on supply and demand for whatever they offer (with supply and demand being determined by everything I discussed above).
Starting a business isn't the only way to participate or take risks in the market. You also can try to sell your skills to another employer.
You will never make above what the market will offer for your skills. To make money in excess of what you can earn for your skills, you must have equity in the entity. Switching jobs is getting more for your skills, but is still participating in the market for labor.
Working for the government - say as a soldier or social worker - doesn’t mean you deserve more than an investment banker. Your choice was to work for that industry. Perceived impact on society does not translate into wealth. Free markets determine pricing. A soldier earns whatever a politician says he or she does.
Any employee of Uber can leave at any time. No one is forcing them into that economic situation. Plenty of examples of people who grow up poor become rich despite not having well connected parents.
What changes to the system are you advocating for exactly?
Side point: and understand if I get trashed here as maybe I am doing what I am about to criticise.... is it just me or are HN comments increasingly glib, political and of little informational value? This post is interesitng information with great potential for interesting discussion but the comments so far seem dominated by a style I would not normally expect on HN, something that has been happening over time but seems sharply more common these days.
When I came to HN, I did so because it was not Reddit. It was dominated by 2 things; information that I didn't understand (too technical) or 2) something that improved my knowledge about the world and business, the discussions often more so than the post.
From this I wonder (assuming people agree...) what can we do to hold the values of old HN discussion/posts, or is this the anthem of progress/popularity I have to accept?
I've been on HN for 7-8 years and there is a difference in the last two years. I've seen a lot more one line comments with sarcastic, jokey, snarky, or flippant content.
Some were always made, but they were very consistently downvoted years ago. The solution I think is to implore those with downvote powers to do a lot more downvoting. In a way it is all custodial duty that cannot be automated.
It can feel mean to downvoted a lot, but there are no shortage of sites where peanut gallery comments are the norm, and I think we should continue to discourage them here as much as possible.
Note: I do not think political or contentious comments are a problem, only the glib.
The guy that replied to you with: "Everything dies or turns to shit in the end." is a good example of what to downvote.
It would be better just to add an ability to flag comments and moderators could take further action. Enhancing downvote ability while it could work in this context it could wreak havoc in heated arguments.
I don't think it's even a case of enhancing anything. It's more to encourage users that do have the feature to actually use it and guidance on when. That would be enough.
I know I hesitate to downvote anything that isn't obviously a troll or blatantly destructive. But that's too low a standard if we want to keep the comment quality from slipping.
Could HN let comments be tagged, let users confirm tags and viewers filter (to either hide or deemphasize) comments by tags and personalized confirmation thresholds?
That would enable users to remove the junk on their own and would be more scalable than a moderation team as well as making HN comments an interesting ML dataset.
This supposed separation between the technical and the social/political is illusory, and shows a very blinkered and sheltered view of the world.
In actuality the technical and the social are deeply enmeshed, the society we live in shapes the tools we have, and the tools we have shape the society we live in. In this case we see a technology being developed and deployed to serve the interests of one group of people with little regard for how it affects the livelihoods of the other group. This is an ideological act, and (contrary to the whinging of so many technological determinists) an ideological deployment of technology.
If you've detected a change in the tone around here it's possible that more and more techies are waking up to the fact that politics is more than just dinner-party conversation and affiliation signalling.
For more on the topic I'd recommend picking up some Andrew Feenberg, his book "Transforming Technology" in particular.
I believe that politics is a cancer. It demands attention, refuses to relinquish control of conversations it becomes a part of, and only very rarely does it contribute anything beyond a lot of yelling back and forth. Once you have brought up Politics, you can rest assured that friends will become enemies, and the conversation will never turn back to the topic at hand.
I understand the urge to bring politics in; the world around us seems to be falling apart because of political schemes. I simply do not care. If you really want to throw fits about capitalism and communism, or throw up a pithy quip about Trump et al., do so in a separate thread, possibly an Ask HN ("Who's your favorite liar?"). I'm going to go enjoy the fact that someone's working on mass-producing a powered exoskeleton.
Unfortunately, if you don't discuss politics, then politics comes to you.
The social power structure of the USA implies that politics is in the hands of the people. At very least, that's the aspiration of the US Political system (even if its got some issues in practice). So convincing other people on a day-to-day basis is one of the more effective ways of causing political change.
If politics is ignored, then you begin to lose in politics. Not only do people affect laws, but laws also affect people. Ignoring this fact will cause the laws to potentially shift away from your favor.
One of the other reasons I hate politics is the mentality that the only losing move is not to play...which is often followed by "vote for me". It's a cheap, underhanded tactic that tales advantage of First Past The Post's greatest weakness as a voting system, and it is the reason why we have to put up with the "lesser" of two evils instead of a decent human being at the reins.
The reason why we put up with the "lesser of two evils" is because the 3rd and 4th evils are the Libertarian Party and Green party respectively.
Which I don't believe represent the people's interest in the slightest. Anti-vax and "What is Aleppo" stain those two.
Its more legitimate to attempt to usurp the parties from within (ie: Trump / Bernie) to represent another option. And lo and behold: 16 of the 17 "standard" Republicans were defeated by Trump.
Now, I don't like Trump myself, but the last election was not standard by any stretch of the imagination. Clinton narrowly defeated Bernie in the primaries (but Bernie did far better than expected), and Trump of course beat all standard Republicans.
In any case, if you want a "3rd option", participate in the primaries. There were 17 Republicans to support (with ~5 very serious contenders: Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Cruz, and Trump) and something like 4 Democrats to support (with ~2 very serious contenders: Bernie and Clinton, although I was partial to Jim Webb).
I personally managed to find someone in both parties that spoke to my viewpoints: Both Bush and Kasich from the Republicans, and Jim Webb in the Democrats. Lawrence Lessig didn't seem to be running a serious Democrat campaign, but if he were more serious I probably would have supported him. Its a shame that "The Wire" was so popular, because it stained Martin O'Malley (who otherwise looked like a solid candidate).
> The reason why we put up with the "lesser of two evils" is because the 3rd and 4th evils are the Libertarian Party and Green party respectively.
> Which I don't believe represent the people's interest in the slightest. Anti-vax and "What is Aleppo" stain those two.
This isn't the reason we put up with the lesser of two evils; it's simply a symptom. The real reason is that, time and time again, the majority votes for a loud extremist instead of picking a quiet and reasonable candidate, and the majority has shown time and time again that once they have chosen a political stance they will happily overlook anything their candidate does, because their candidate is the lesser evil.
> Its more legitimate to attempt to usurp the parties from within (ie: Trump / Bernie) to represent another option. And lo and behold: 16 of the 17 "standard" Republicans were defeated by Trump.
Theoretically correct. It's theoretically easier to convince a majority to vote for me as a "Republican" or a "Democrat" than it is to convince everyone to stop voting for the lesser of two evils, or to implement an alternative vote. However, all three of these options would require that I dedicate my life to a topic which infuriates me, instead of going about my own business.
> In any case, if you want a "3rd option", participate in the primaries. There were 17 Republicans to support (with ~5 very serious contenders: Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Cruz, and Trump) and something like 4 Democrats to support (with ~2 very serious contenders: Bernie and Clinton, although I was partial to Jim Webb).
But again, the issue of the majority comes up--because the vast majority of people would rather vote for the lesser of two evils, and guarantee a tyrant they agree with, instead of voting for a decent leader, and risking a tyrant they don't agree with getting voted in by people who think that tyrant is the lesser of two evils.
> I personally managed to find someone in both parties that spoke to my viewpoints: Both Bush and Kasich from the Republicans, and Jim Webb in the Democrats. Lawrence Lessig didn't seem to be running a serious Democrat campaign, but if he were more serious I probably would have supported him. Its a shame that "The Wire" was so popular, because it stained Martin O'Malley (who otherwise looked like a solid candidate).
It also doesn't help that 90% of the coverage of an election is focused on the two most questionable candidates. It really doesn't help that most people are expected to vote even if their only understanding of the political climate is from flawed news.
> There was a lot of choice actually.
There was a lot of choice, but as of right now, none of these choices are going to end well. I am stuck in a Prisoner's Dilemma in which I know the other party is always choosing A. I am now choosing not to play, because I am frustrated and have better things to do with my time than play a game of Prisoner's Dilemma every four years.
the thing is, the rift between your average Republican and Democrat is wide enough that most will barely see each other, let alone interact on such a politically skewed site as HN. The urban/rural split is part of it but it seems in every other way Americans are divided into 2 nations - there was an interesting article that talked about it the other week.
>most will barely see each other, let alone interact on such a politically skewed site as HN
Or whoever is less represented (local to a given site/subsite) will just shut up because they don't want to fight a 10:1 losing battle with people who can't be convinced to see their side of things (subreddits are a good example).
There's also probably a bunch of people from rural areas in your downtown office who think you're crazy. The foreigners probably think the same thing. Neither group will tell you about it though. It's just not worth saying anything in those settings.
There's also probably a bunch of people from rural areas in your downtown office who think you're crazy. The foreigners probably think the same thing.
I have found this to be true. Two disparate groups reject the narratives that dominate North American media: Male foreigners from arab and poorer countries, and whites from rural North America. The whites don't voice their opinions, because they get viciously attacked; the Arabs and immigrants from poorer areas just laugh at us.
And as you drill down and enumerate more and more distinct narratives you have enough stuff that basically everyone disagrees with something but nobody says anything because the penalty for disagreeing is too high.
This is very true too, the "shy Tory effect" in action. I'm British and often find myself in the more conservative end of places I work (being a classical liberal of sorts) so I'm familiar with the implicit suppression you're talking about.
>the world around us seems to be falling apart because of political schemes. I simply do not care.
Then maybe go to a forum for people who don't care whether or not the world is falling apart. The rest of us, well, we live in the world, so we kinda care.
This is amongst the silliest things I have ever read.
> I simply do not care.
Right, so you live in the kind of comfort and privilege that allows you to detach from society and the political process. Acknowledge that the vast majority of people don't have the same privilege.
Is it really that silly to want to do things for the sake of enjoyment or benefiting others, instead of doing things to spite a talking head on the TV who says mean things?
It's a real problem that the political systems of the world are broken at best, but quite frankly I haven't got time or money enough to fix it, and my resources are better spent trying to build interesting things and watching others build interesting things. I cannot save the World; I can absolutely make my own life better, and help others around me.
How is it blocked? Programming is not illegal. Neither is art. Unless your aspirations are politics, political decisions only rarely enter into the equation.
That isn't to say it never comes into play, or that it never becomes a big enough problem to interrupt your actual goals. However, in my (~20 years) of experience in this world, what the President is saying has nothing to do with me. Indeed, the vast, vast majority of 'politics' (i.e., the things that catch your attention in news shows and blog posts) is pointless yelling, and has nothing to do with either of us, or any of the people who angrily demand action and strut back and forth in the comments.
Recently, the same people who wage war in comment sections started warring in the streets, and it has only gotten worse.
These are all reasons why I dislike politics, and why I advocate for separating politics from everything else. There is no point in trying to find a political statement in the games I'm trying to create. At best, you'd get to feel like a hero because you trashed someone's work over some supposed connection to Hitler. Similarly, I have no reason to go around waving guns and demanding that Hacker News ban all commies, or declaring anybody who doesn't use my exact combination of pronouns to be part of the new Reich. I would have nothing but a false sense of purpose to gain from these things, and I'd rather have the real sense of purpose from creating something people enjoy.
>How is it blocked? Programming is not illegal. Neither is art. Unless your aspirations are politics, political decisions only rarely enter into the equation.
I have friends who are graduate students, and I used to be one. Doubling taxes on everyone working in a specific field is... well, it's cutting off people's livelihood out of pure political spite.
As it is, labor law has a daily effect on all of us who work for a living, and recent Congressional efforts in healthcare policy have basically constituted stochastic terrorism against the population at large. Threats of war, loss of healthcare, loss of Social Security, doublings of taxes -- these things affect people's lives.
Almost everyone has that privilege. We aren't required to vote in the United States and never have been, and detaching ones-self from society in some ways is part of the fabric of the US - the journey west is one such example, but the idea of the nuclear family is actually another.
I don't think the issue it with "political", but rather with "glib [...] and of little informational value".
There's a comment in this thread saying "Welcome to late stage capitalism, folks" with a follow up asserting slavery. Both are dead, but presumably weren't when GP wrote their side point, and anecdotally that kind of commentary feels like it's in the ascendency.
> I don't think the issue it with "political", but rather with "glib [...] and of little informational value".
Full agreement on that one, but those labels are sometimes applied unfairly to any comment which doesn't toe the valley-culture-technological-determinism line too :)
Except at some point, if you are an engineer, you need to do actual engineering. I see more interesting stuff in my Twitter feed now than shows up on HN.
This story has 74 comments, none of them actually mention the company that makes the product the story is about ( Ekso Bionics ) Most, including this thread of comments, are completely off topic.
> the society we live in shapes the tools we have, and the tools we have shape the society we live in
Incidentally, that's (my understanding of) what "the medium is the message" was about. Basically, changing the profile of which actions/habits/business models are feasible has a far more powerful effect on society and culture than do the specific decisions made within that profile.
HN often feels to me like like are two intermixed sites: the HN with good deep technical and business discussion and a site of web developers arguing politics.
I can't believe that. Nothing will be perfect but there must be some combination of options that can improve things significantly.
Maybe it is volunteer mods. Or HN require new members to pass a 'best use' rules questionnaire before posting (or exiting offenders). Or they run algorithms to find users that vote inline with the spirit of HN and ninja ban people they downvote.
I dont profess to know the answer but there must be improving options available. And further someone solving this is a quite important concept (and potentially a great business too), as while here I want a better conversation, the recent US elections showed us what bot armies and paid shills can do, there are probably options that can be employed in the wider internet encourage genuine conversation in general.
> Best you can do is to ignore content and comments which are irrelevant to you, that way quality always meet your standards
The community of actively participating submitters and commentators is surprisingly small. This is true for nearly all communities.
If HN had a really rich ignore feature, it would take a very short time to create a personal ignore list that pruned the glib or polarising political commentators.
I would say though, that whilst this has proven to be a good thing on the communities I run, I personally prefer not to use ignore features.
Flippancy, and sarcasm bother me far less than when people form very strong opinions and feel the need to express them based on the title of the article alone.
The problem is that creating spoof accounts are an unlimited resource, but moderators are limited.
They should fix this by preventing new sign ups. When the culture returns to something that people like, open a limited number of sign ups per month (perhaps you need to be "vetted" by an active account to sign up).
The problem is purely that of endless summer, and websites just copying broken social commenting features and systems from each other instead of setting up the incentive structure correctly.
Yeah, but any post that involves bitcoin, the FBI/CIA/NSA/DOD and the darknet is bound to bring people out of the woodwork. The most interesting articles tend to have more...thoughtful comments.
I've also noticed a huge spike in really hardcore anti-capitalism comments. I'm all for UBI and adding other strong social safety net features, but I'm seeing more anger/revolutionary sentiment. Maybe it's just a reflection of a shift in population sentiment, but it seems almost like we're getting brigaded by some group.
I haven't seen signs that it's brigading, and since the same trends are showing up everywhere else, I think the default hypothesis is more likely: it's a macro change in social sentiment or segments thereof. HN isn't immune from any of that.
This concerns me as well. I would downvote such comments if I could but I don't have downvote powers yet, and don't know how to get them. Can anyone shed light on that?
The picture reminds me of the scene in Iron Man 2 where the Hammer Industries attempts to copy the suit and a test video shows the suit twisting the test pilot's top half all the way 'round.
whole lot of weasel words in here.
"time away from the job"
"lessen the chance of fatigue "
"reduce the physical toll on employees"
Its workplace injury, or "injury, illness and fatality" as defined by OSHA.
If the goal really is to protect workers, then bravo. If its to push the envelope on OSHA regulations and skirt safe work environments because joe six pack climbed into a robocop costume, then no. So far the Ekso company mostly works in rehabilitative technology.
I find it incredibly impressive for a manufacturer to achieve something like this.