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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

If I had a house set up with a single room (foyer, mud room, etc.) with an external door openable with this, and an interior door openable only by me, I'd love to have the ability for Amazon to drop packages there. Keep the room on video, make sure the front door has logging, and it'd be pretty reasonable overall.

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My college dorm had an airlock setup that was something like this, with an inner and outer door that both lock separately. A couple times we woke up to find a homeless person had caught the outer door as somebody was coming or going and taken up residence to escape the winter cold.

The best use-case for me is a smart lock on a garage or outhouse, and a door-bell with remote access (such as Ring [1])

Driver rings the bell as they would usually, you remotely open the garage and ask them to drop the package there, and then remotely close it and lock it.

[1] https://ring.com

That's a solid idea. Will be interesting to see if things like this change how new homes are designed.

For a second I thought you were commenting under /u/jurassic and envisioned an uber-altruistic future where homes are built to include an entryway for the homeless to escape winter cold.

I find it amusing that you consider that an "uber-altruistic" future would mean having homeless people sleep on the floor of a small empty entryway. I think there's probably a better and more efficient way to solve that problem.

I wasn't meaning that the open entryways were a solution for homelessness, only that a society which was accepting of a design element incorporated into their homes which was intentionally for utilization by and to the benefit of a stranger could reasonably be described as 'uber-altruistic'.

I find it amusing that you use "Uber" and "Altruistic" in the same sentence.

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