OPEN MODIFIED "HOT ROD" TRACTOR MAX. WEIGHT: 6lbs.
SEMI "BIG RIG" MAX. WEIGHT: 7lbs.
I'm not affiliated, never even seen it, I literally found that site from googling after the poster I replied to said "I want to see a micro-tractor pull." Google for "micro-tractor pull" and that site is literally the first non-youtube link.
I believe they could well be almost as awesome as you want them to be. Because the limit tire sizes, wheel base, engine size... so, yeah, they have a version of a "stock, unmodified".
Unless the site is en elaborate hoax (which is a really strange thing to hoax about), the awesome you hope for may be real.
Yeah, no shit, Facebook is an ad and marketing company masquerading as a social media site.
They have one product: the collection and sale of your personal information.
That's how they make their money. The need that to make money. They exist to make money.
So, as usual, fuck you, Facebook. Not interested in your crap, not going to let the bullshit embedded tracking in web pages I didn't consent to to happen, and sure as hell not every going to use any of your products with an EULA which says "all your base are belong to us".
All companies these days are overreaching assholes, and Zuckerfuck is one of the worst.
I'm not surprised at all that Facebook are doing shit like this. This is just one more reason why they can piss off, and why I'll keep blocking their crap at my firewall -- no, you can't post to Facebook while using my network. Boo fucking hoo.
Who the hell said anything about solely surviving on salads? I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not a fucking cow.
Green leafy things have lots of other nutritional stuff as well. Which means while they may not provide all of your calories, they might provide some valuable nutrients. Oh, and they're tasty. Which is why you'd also grow herb.
Now, imagine, you're a researcher in the arse end of the world... oh, I don't know, Antarctica maybe. How happy would you be to have a salad once or twice a week instead of whatever can O stuff you have left?
I bet if you stood up in the cafeteria in the period of time when they can't get new supplies, and all the fresh stuff is gone, and offered to sell a fresh head of lettuce you'd have no problems. In fact, I bet you'd have a bidding war or a riot on your hands. Now imagine everybody can have a little lettuce.
There are a LOT of places which are hard to get to, have a lot of cold and dark, and where fresh produce is either non-existent or incredibly expensive. In those places, the ability to grow these things indoors and have them more during the year would be a hell of an improvement -- both mentally and nutritionally.
Hell, a little fresh basil and a side salad could probably make chipped beef on toast better if that's what was left in the provisions. Certainly compared to NOT having a little fresh basil and a side salad.
Stop thinking in terms of getting all of your calories from lettuce, and think in terms of getting fresh local produce which is out of season, especially in places where you'd almost never see it.
ANY degree of putting some food production local is a good thing, if for nothing else than you can have fresh, quality stuff which hasn't had to travel halfway around the world.
BUT, the kind of thing this article is talking about is indoor growing, not out in the wild, and with a significant amount of automation... you know like this.
The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.
So, really... are you so sure about what you said? Because it sounds like the technology to start doing this on a sizable scale already exists.
Imagine a future where cities become self-sufficient in their food production
It didn't say "this will make cities self-sufficient".
And any degree to which you can grow locally instead of importing adds a degree of "self-sufficieny" and is stuff you don't need to import, and which doesn't need to travel thousands of miles.
I'm assuming TFA is an April Fool's joke... but the idea isn't so crazy.
Hell, at one point this year cauliflower was something like $11 each. For ONE damned cauliflower. Because it all came from the same place or something like that. Shielding yourself from huge fluctuations in the price of produce which needs to be imported from around the world is definitely a step forward.
If the German's can build this awesome transparent factory for cars, I can imagine the "lettuce tower" and the "herb district" if the technology was right and it was cost effective.
Dammit, Germany... get on with that, will you? We totally need that.
others just put them on display by the hostess podium and sell them so fast it doesn't matter that they're slowly dying in the air-conditioning/dim artificial light. Well, I guess relative to how much it did the same thing in a box inside a dark, refrigerated shipping-container travelling half way around the world is an important consideration.
"Slowly dying" when it was harvested yesterday instead of, oh, a few weeks ago is a hell of an improvement.
Oh, that and e coli and listeria and other nasty crap is far less likely to creep in along the way due to industrial processing.
This is more about hipsterism than efficiency. And even for the hipsters, urban farming is only about fresh herbs and salad greens, which are difficult to transport and store.
Wait, what? It would be a hipster thing to want to have fresh herbs and salads which are difficult to transport and store so they don't have to come from half way around the world? Maybe even have them in winter in places which can't normally have them and have to import them? Or in remote places where you simply can't get it pretty much ever because of the shipping costs?
Damn those hipsters and their food independence and sustainability! We should all depend on countries thousands of miles away for our produce!! Why just think of the damage to corporate profits and executive bonuses if people could grow their own food where they live.
The nerve of people wanting fresh, local produce which hasn't been shipped halfway around the world and is still fresh, tasty, and nutritious! Oh, and don't forget free from whatever 3rd world pesticides were used and the e-coli contamination happened in the processing plants.
Nope, no benefit whatsoever in any of that.
here is no way that urban farming is going to work for staples like wheat or oil seeds, so the notion that cities will be self-sufficient in food is silly.
So, what, it replaces all of farming or it's useless? Wow, we should all just give up and go home.
Obviously fully self sufficient is unlikely. But more self sufficient isn't a bad idea. I bet if you lived in places where all food needs to get brought in and the climate doesn't all you to have fresh produce some salad greens in the dead of winter would be awesome.
There's tons of places where getting fresh greens is a luxury. Growing them nearby can change that somewhat.
LOL... well, there's these guys. National Micro-Mini Tractor Pullers Association
Micro-Mini Tractor Pulling is a 1/16 scale version of full size tractor pulling. A weight transfer sled is pulled by these small "toy" pullers on a 2'x16' wooden track which is either covered with a formica surface or sealed with a smooth surface of polyurethane. Some of these pulling units in the 6 lb. open modified tractor class have been known to pull in excess of 600 lbs.
Better than the flood of stupid april fools stories, in my opinion.
Having been traumatized by the "OMG! Ponies" theme years ago, I always cringe when I first load Slashdot on April 1st, since I have no idea what to expect.
Honestly, it might be one of my more productive days, because I've learned to stay the hell away from the interwebs due to the sheer amount of crap which happens.:-P
But being poor is based on reported income. So there are literally millions in this country who get all the free stuff and can still drive around in a brand new mega truck cause they don't report their income.
So, it's pretty much the same as rich assholes and corporations keeping their money in offshore accounts?
Or is it OK when you're rich to not report your income?
If it's good enough for Apple, Microsoft, and Google... or any of those rich people who can afford a shady accountant to hide the money, it must be fine for the poor folks.
Isn't hiding your money and dodging taxes the American way?
In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.
That's because a Big Mac is cheaper to buy than groceries. Soda is cheaper than bottled water. And that orange crap Americans think is cheese is also dirt cheap.
The problem is the affordable food is complete and utter garbage, and mostly filled with high fructose corn syrup so farmers can keep getting paid to grow a crop which is causing everybody to get fat and diabetic.
Eating nutritious food which hasn't been processed to death is now expensive.
Maybe you should ponder why what you say is true instead of just acting all smug about it.
Quoting you: "Unfortunately, I have met people are borderline illiterate..."
By your own standard, tells us everything we need to know about you and whatever you spout.
Well, skippy, when you're all growed up and have seen a little more... you just might realize that there are people out there working in professional jobs whose language and grammar skills really are that bad. And it really marks them as just that.
And when you have to hand that to a client, you can risk hurting someone's feelings, or looking like everyone you work with (including you) is equally illiterate.
Not that the rest of your passive-aggressive diatribe didn't already make that clear.
Aww, Pookie, how tragic for you. How about straight up aggressive... I don't give a a fuck about your opinion, so go fuck yourself. Is that better, sweety?
I've had to work with people who could barely write a sentence. I don't make a habit of telling them they're illiterate. But, sometimes, you pretty much have no choice, because someone else's stupidity can reflect poorly on you when they want to hand something off which reads like it was written by a teenager with a learning disability.
There's a point at which someone's gross inability to write the English language is so obvious that if you don't tell them, you're going to look like you didn't know enough to tell them how bad it was.
And, I'm sorry, but I won't do that.
I've proofread documents which someone wanted to deliver and had to say "woah, hang on, this looks like it was written by a moron". It's one thing if I think you're illiterate, but if the client does, it's another thing entirely.
What we need are sane fucking data protection laws which says if you collect my information for business purposes, you may NOT use that for ANY reason other than why you collected it.
Sharing MY data to make more money for YOU makes you a complete asshole.
It's time we stopped fucking pretending that anything corporations do to make a profit is inherently good, and start realizing that corporations are greedy assholes who need to be reined in.
Unfortunately, the idiot law makers are so heavily on the payroll they're incapable of doing anything BUT promote corporate interests.
So, do you live in a place where another company is free to run a sewer line to your house so you can subscribe to their service?
Or do you think maybe the final infrastructure which comes into peoples houses shouldn't be the property of a corporation?
It's time to stop pretending that infrastructure which we've paid for, and which has rights of way on public and private property should be treated as the exclusive property of some asshole corporation like AT&T.
That's just idiotically subsidizing AT&T to remain a monopoly, while saying if people don't want monopolies they can build their own infrastructure.
Like the water, sewer, and electricity coming into your home... the network needs to be considered part of the municipal infrastructure.
Oh, I don't go around telling people I think they're illiterate. It serves no point, and I have enough self awareness to know that.
But, unfortunately for the people who really are borderline illiterate... once you consistently demonstrate that, even if I don't point it out, I may still rank the value of the stuff you say as if I assume you're a moron.
Unfortunately, I have met people are borderline illiterate, and bordering on being actual morons... those people you are forced to wonder how the hell they got the job in the first place. Especially when they work in a professional capacity with you.
I've known people who are somewhat uneducated, and I don't give a crap about their grammar and spelling, and don't judge them for it. But if you're supposed to be a functioning professional, and you come off as half-way illiterate, it really cuts into the credibility of everything else you do.
An anonymous reader cites a report on VentureBeat: Microsoft today announced that Xamarin is now available for free for every Visual Studio user. This includes all editions of Visual Studio, including the free Visual Studio Community Edition, Visual Studio Professional, and Visual Studio Enterprise. Furthermore, Xamarin Studio for OS X is being made available for free as a community edition and Visual Studio Enterprise subscribers will get access to Xamarin's enterprise capabilities at no additional cost. The company also promised to open source Xamarin's SDK, including its runtime, libraries, and command line tools, as part of the.NET Foundation 'in the coming months.' Plenty of developers will find this announcement exciting. Xamarin being free is a big deal.
I'm not reading TFA to find out WTF TFS is about, the entire purpose of TFS is to know what the hell TFA is about so I can decide if I fucking care.
So, something I've never heard of is now free... do I give a shit or not? I'm afraid if the poster refuses to tell me what the hell it is, I don't give a damn enough to RTFA.
TFS is there to tell me what TFA is about. The problem is, it utterly fails in that basic task.
Hey, why not just post URLs with no summary, and we'll cut out the middle man entirely?
Apparently the premise of the educational system is it's oppressive to hold people to a standard, and pointing out such things as atrocious grammar and spelling are detrimental to people's self esteem.
We're now defining "jerk" as "someone who insists on maintaining a standard of demonstrating you're not illiterate".
Why, it would be downright rude to point out that things like "mys well" is a reflection that you have no frigging idea of the words you wish to use and just make some vague sounds -- and that once you actually write them down you demonstrate you really don't have a working knowledge of the language.
For those of us who were traumatized by English teachers who could still threaten the use of the ruler to give you a smack... the fact that the English language has devolved into the mumbling of illiterate teenagers who don't know the words they're trying to use is appalling. They have some random group of sounds they think means something, but they don't know any of the actual words.
I might not point out bad grammar and spelling, but that doesn't mean I don't notice that somehow someone has made it into a professional career while being largely illiterate. Which, unfortunately, makes me far more skeptical about the rest of what you have to say.
No, because if you go out and buy 5 batches of the same spices, from 5 different places, mix 5 different batches of the same recipe... you will have 5 different tasting dishes.
I don't mean nuance in the sense of magic, I mean nuance in the real sense that the ingredients aren't digital and will have variations, and you will need to tweak your recipe to keep it tasting the same. One batch of peppers might burn your face off, and another might be fairly mild. Because nobody told the pepper they were expected to produce an exact amount of heat.
If you don't understand that about food, then you really do know nothing about food.
Places have been using machines to chop vegetables for a long time, and I personally own many such tools, as do restaurants... but to make the meal from prep to cook by a machine? I'm highly skeptical that's going to produce food people want to eat in restaurants.
I'd love to eat in a restaurant staffed only by wizards. But if you don't think there's actual skill required to produce good tasting food, you probably are willing to eat crappy food. If your machine can produce the same food over and over and over and have it taste the same... then it's probably some damned boring food.
But the difference between well prepared food and generic slop? Well, in that chasm is the automation people are claiming will revolutionize the food industry.
I just don't agree with the usual breathless futurists who are claiming we're going to have gleaming kitchens of robots cranking out our meals any time soon. Not by a long shot.
If that kid who is putting potatoes into your thing that makes fries is the difference between staying in business or not, you're probably already screwed. And if you're just going to give up and bring in food which is already prepared, well, then you can be McDonald's -- and obviously there's money to be made that way.
But when I see the word "restaurants", I think well beyond fast food places who specialize in producing food by rote.
Slashdot Mirror
You know you wanna:
Well, here's the abridged version:
I'm not affiliated, never even seen it, I literally found that site from googling after the poster I replied to said "I want to see a micro-tractor pull." Google for "micro-tractor pull" and that site is literally the first non-youtube link.
I believe they could well be almost as awesome as you want them to be. Because the limit tire sizes, wheel base, engine size ... so, yeah, they have a version of a "stock, unmodified".
Unless the site is en elaborate hoax (which is a really strange thing to hoax about), the awesome you hope for may be real.
Yeah, no shit, Facebook is an ad and marketing company masquerading as a social media site.
They have one product: the collection and sale of your personal information.
That's how they make their money. The need that to make money. They exist to make money.
So, as usual, fuck you, Facebook. Not interested in your crap, not going to let the bullshit embedded tracking in web pages I didn't consent to to happen, and sure as hell not every going to use any of your products with an EULA which says "all your base are belong to us".
All companies these days are overreaching assholes, and Zuckerfuck is one of the worst.
I'm not surprised at all that Facebook are doing shit like this. This is just one more reason why they can piss off, and why I'll keep blocking their crap at my firewall -- no, you can't post to Facebook while using my network. Boo fucking hoo.
Why am I suddenly picturing a bunch of Linux geeks in black satin jackets and a red Huggy Bear hats?
Just me then?
Best ... prank ... ever.
Yo, Dawg ... I hear you like Red Hats ... so I got you a Red Hat so you can Red Hat while you're Red Hat'n.
Are you getting paid by the Red Hat? Or do you just really like typing Red Hat?
It's Red Hats all the way down, bitches. Because Red Hat!
Because this is Slashdot, and it's April 1st, and I've learned that makes for a combination requiring some distrust.
I know these kinds of things exist, and people are building them. I have no idea if this specific story is fake or not.
I'm not disputing that, I actually agree this is cool technology which needs to exist, and I know people are working on it.
Whether or not, today, in Berlin there's little tiny huts in grocery stores growing fresh herbs? I hope it's true.
Who the hell said anything about solely surviving on salads? I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not a fucking cow.
Green leafy things have lots of other nutritional stuff as well. Which means while they may not provide all of your calories, they might provide some valuable nutrients. Oh, and they're tasty. Which is why you'd also grow herb.
Now, imagine, you're a researcher in the arse end of the world ... oh, I don't know, Antarctica maybe. How happy would you be to have a salad once or twice a week instead of whatever can O stuff you have left?
I bet if you stood up in the cafeteria in the period of time when they can't get new supplies, and all the fresh stuff is gone, and offered to sell a fresh head of lettuce you'd have no problems. In fact, I bet you'd have a bidding war or a riot on your hands. Now imagine everybody can have a little lettuce.
There are a LOT of places which are hard to get to, have a lot of cold and dark, and where fresh produce is either non-existent or incredibly expensive. In those places, the ability to grow these things indoors and have them more during the year would be a hell of an improvement -- both mentally and nutritionally.
Hell, a little fresh basil and a side salad could probably make chipped beef on toast better if that's what was left in the provisions. Certainly compared to NOT having a little fresh basil and a side salad.
Stop thinking in terms of getting all of your calories from lettuce, and think in terms of getting fresh local produce which is out of season, especially in places where you'd almost never see it.
ANY degree of putting some food production local is a good thing, if for nothing else than you can have fresh, quality stuff which hasn't had to travel halfway around the world.
All valid points.
BUT, the kind of thing this article is talking about is indoor growing, not out in the wild, and with a significant amount of automation ... you know like this.
So, really ... are you so sure about what you said? Because it sounds like the technology to start doing this on a sizable scale already exists.
India is a corrupt country. America is an unjust society.
These two things are independent of one another.
Sure, but TFS says this:
It didn't say "this will make cities self-sufficient".
And any degree to which you can grow locally instead of importing adds a degree of "self-sufficieny" and is stuff you don't need to import, and which doesn't need to travel thousands of miles.
I'm assuming TFA is an April Fool's joke ... but the idea isn't so crazy.
Hell, at one point this year cauliflower was something like $11 each. For ONE damned cauliflower. Because it all came from the same place or something like that. Shielding yourself from huge fluctuations in the price of produce which needs to be imported from around the world is definitely a step forward.
If the German's can build this awesome transparent factory for cars, I can imagine the "lettuce tower" and the "herb district" if the technology was right and it was cost effective.
Dammit, Germany ... get on with that, will you? We totally need that.
Wait, what? It would be a hipster thing to want to have fresh herbs and salads which are difficult to transport and store so they don't have to come from half way around the world? Maybe even have them in winter in places which can't normally have them and have to import them? Or in remote places where you simply can't get it pretty much ever because of the shipping costs?
Damn those hipsters and their food independence and sustainability! We should all depend on countries thousands of miles away for our produce!! Why just think of the damage to corporate profits and executive bonuses if people could grow their own food where they live.
The nerve of people wanting fresh, local produce which hasn't been shipped halfway around the world and is still fresh, tasty, and nutritious! Oh, and don't forget free from whatever 3rd world pesticides were used and the e-coli contamination happened in the processing plants.
Nope, no benefit whatsoever in any of that.
So, what, it replaces all of farming or it's useless? Wow, we should all just give up and go home.
Obviously fully self sufficient is unlikely. But more self sufficient isn't a bad idea. I bet if you lived in places where all food needs to get brought in and the climate doesn't all you to have fresh produce some salad greens in the dead of winter would be awesome.
There's tons of places where getting fresh greens is a luxury. Growing them nearby can change that somewhat.
LOL ... well, there's these guys. National Micro-Mini Tractor Pullers Association
No, I didn't make that up.
You're welcome.
Actually, the tractor is sitting in a drawer ... it's a micro-farm, after all, so you only need a micro-tractor.
It charges off USB, so it's pretty green since you can do that with solar.
Having been traumatized by the "OMG! Ponies" theme years ago, I always cringe when I first load Slashdot on April 1st, since I have no idea what to expect.
Honestly, it might be one of my more productive days, because I've learned to stay the hell away from the interwebs due to the sheer amount of crap which happens. :-P
So, it's pretty much the same as rich assholes and corporations keeping their money in offshore accounts?
Or is it OK when you're rich to not report your income?
If it's good enough for Apple, Microsoft, and Google ... or any of those rich people who can afford a shady accountant to hide the money, it must be fine for the poor folks.
Isn't hiding your money and dodging taxes the American way?
That's because a Big Mac is cheaper to buy than groceries. Soda is cheaper than bottled water. And that orange crap Americans think is cheese is also dirt cheap.
The problem is the affordable food is complete and utter garbage, and mostly filled with high fructose corn syrup so farmers can keep getting paid to grow a crop which is causing everybody to get fat and diabetic.
Eating nutritious food which hasn't been processed to death is now expensive.
Maybe you should ponder why what you say is true instead of just acting all smug about it.
Well, skippy, when you're all growed up and have seen a little more ... you just might realize that there are people out there working in professional jobs whose language and grammar skills really are that bad. And it really marks them as just that.
And when you have to hand that to a client, you can risk hurting someone's feelings, or looking like everyone you work with (including you) is equally illiterate.
Aww, Pookie, how tragic for you. How about straight up aggressive ... I don't give a a fuck about your opinion, so go fuck yourself. Is that better, sweety?
I've had to work with people who could barely write a sentence. I don't make a habit of telling them they're illiterate. But, sometimes, you pretty much have no choice, because someone else's stupidity can reflect poorly on you when they want to hand something off which reads like it was written by a teenager with a learning disability.
There's a point at which someone's gross inability to write the English language is so obvious that if you don't tell them, you're going to look like you didn't know enough to tell them how bad it was.
And, I'm sorry, but I won't do that.
I've proofread documents which someone wanted to deliver and had to say "woah, hang on, this looks like it was written by a moron". It's one thing if I think you're illiterate, but if the client does, it's another thing entirely.
What we need are sane fucking data protection laws which says if you collect my information for business purposes, you may NOT use that for ANY reason other than why you collected it.
Sharing MY data to make more money for YOU makes you a complete asshole.
It's time we stopped fucking pretending that anything corporations do to make a profit is inherently good, and start realizing that corporations are greedy assholes who need to be reined in.
Unfortunately, the idiot law makers are so heavily on the payroll they're incapable of doing anything BUT promote corporate interests.
Honestly, if you give a company -- especially a company like AT&T -- the ability to just take your money, you deserve it.
Send me a paper bill, in the mail, and I'll pay it. If you just make shit up, I'll call you and yell.
But if you demand the right to just take money from me? Fuck you, fuck off, no way in hell I'm signing up for that bit of stupidity.
Companies like AT&T are too greed and incompetent to be trusted with that.
So, do you live in a place where another company is free to run a sewer line to your house so you can subscribe to their service?
Or do you think maybe the final infrastructure which comes into peoples houses shouldn't be the property of a corporation?
It's time to stop pretending that infrastructure which we've paid for, and which has rights of way on public and private property should be treated as the exclusive property of some asshole corporation like AT&T.
That's just idiotically subsidizing AT&T to remain a monopoly, while saying if people don't want monopolies they can build their own infrastructure.
Like the water, sewer, and electricity coming into your home ... the network needs to be considered part of the municipal infrastructure.
Oh, I don't go around telling people I think they're illiterate. It serves no point, and I have enough self awareness to know that.
But, unfortunately for the people who really are borderline illiterate ... once you consistently demonstrate that, even if I don't point it out, I may still rank the value of the stuff you say as if I assume you're a moron.
Unfortunately, I have met people are borderline illiterate, and bordering on being actual morons ... those people you are forced to wonder how the hell they got the job in the first place. Especially when they work in a professional capacity with you.
I've known people who are somewhat uneducated, and I don't give a crap about their grammar and spelling, and don't judge them for it. But if you're supposed to be a functioning professional, and you come off as half-way illiterate, it really cuts into the credibility of everything else you do.
Oh, bullshit. The ENTIRE SUMMARY is:
I'm not reading TFA to find out WTF TFS is about, the entire purpose of TFS is to know what the hell TFA is about so I can decide if I fucking care.
So, something I've never heard of is now free ... do I give a shit or not? I'm afraid if the poster refuses to tell me what the hell it is, I don't give a damn enough to RTFA.
TFS is there to tell me what TFA is about. The problem is, it utterly fails in that basic task.
Hey, why not just post URLs with no summary, and we'll cut out the middle man entirely?
Haven't you been paying attention?
Apparently the premise of the educational system is it's oppressive to hold people to a standard, and pointing out such things as atrocious grammar and spelling are detrimental to people's self esteem.
We're now defining "jerk" as "someone who insists on maintaining a standard of demonstrating you're not illiterate".
Why, it would be downright rude to point out that things like "mys well" is a reflection that you have no frigging idea of the words you wish to use and just make some vague sounds -- and that once you actually write them down you demonstrate you really don't have a working knowledge of the language.
For those of us who were traumatized by English teachers who could still threaten the use of the ruler to give you a smack ... the fact that the English language has devolved into the mumbling of illiterate teenagers who don't know the words they're trying to use is appalling. They have some random group of sounds they think means something, but they don't know any of the actual words.
I might not point out bad grammar and spelling, but that doesn't mean I don't notice that somehow someone has made it into a professional career while being largely illiterate. Which, unfortunately, makes me far more skeptical about the rest of what you have to say.
No, because if you go out and buy 5 batches of the same spices, from 5 different places, mix 5 different batches of the same recipe ... you will have 5 different tasting dishes.
I don't mean nuance in the sense of magic, I mean nuance in the real sense that the ingredients aren't digital and will have variations, and you will need to tweak your recipe to keep it tasting the same. One batch of peppers might burn your face off, and another might be fairly mild. Because nobody told the pepper they were expected to produce an exact amount of heat.
If you don't understand that about food, then you really do know nothing about food.
Places have been using machines to chop vegetables for a long time, and I personally own many such tools, as do restaurants ... but to make the meal from prep to cook by a machine? I'm highly skeptical that's going to produce food people want to eat in restaurants.
I'd love to eat in a restaurant staffed only by wizards. But if you don't think there's actual skill required to produce good tasting food, you probably are willing to eat crappy food. If your machine can produce the same food over and over and over and have it taste the same ... then it's probably some damned boring food.
But the difference between well prepared food and generic slop? Well, in that chasm is the automation people are claiming will revolutionize the food industry.
I just don't agree with the usual breathless futurists who are claiming we're going to have gleaming kitchens of robots cranking out our meals any time soon. Not by a long shot.
If that kid who is putting potatoes into your thing that makes fries is the difference between staying in business or not, you're probably already screwed. And if you're just going to give up and bring in food which is already prepared, well, then you can be McDonald's -- and obviously there's money to be made that way.
But when I see the word "restaurants", I think well beyond fast food places who specialize in producing food by rote.