Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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A nice cold drink

21st century refreshment service
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You're hot. You're waiting in a queue outside. You've been in line for hours, the sun is shining, and your destination, that is, the front of the queue, is out of sight. What you need most is a nice cold drink.

Some enterprising individual has set up a stall selling refreshments only a few hundred yards ahead, but at this rate you could die of thirst before you reach them. You daren't risk losing your position, after all this invested time. Is this really what life has turned into? This, in the age of botnet toasters and dishwasher-firmware-upgrades?

Download the Cold Drink Queue Delivery Service app and hand over payment details. Select from a choice of refreshments. The app sends initial GPS coordinates but crucially starts flashing the camera's LED light in a certain pattern. Moments later a drone carrying your beverage appears, searches for the telltale flashing of the LED, and hands over the payload. Along with the drink, you get a flyer you can hand to people who all want the same service.

Subsequently, money appears in my bank account.

mitxela, Jun 03 2017

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       How is a simple iceman to compete against a drone.   

       The iceman cry-ith large wet tears. Time for drone target practice the iceman sigh-ith.
popbottle, Jun 03 2017
  

       I'm not sure that drones carrying metal cans would be entirely popular in London at the moment.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 03 2017
  

       I think I'll configure my phone to look for flashing LED's and emulate them.
Voice, Jun 05 2017
  

       Conveniently, there is a camera on most phones that contain an LED. This could be used for bi-directional communication, facilitating the use of public key encryption.   

       The drinks should perhaps be served in transparent disposable cups, with lids, suspended from a single-use winch. Once lowered to the recipient, they can just tug to snap the thread free and the drone flies off.
mitxela, Jun 05 2017
  

       transparent, disposable drone-cups.
FlyingToaster, Jun 05 2017
  

       The current buzz for drone delivery will go the way of the flying car and day trips to the moon we were promised in the previous century.   

       While it's slightly less tech intensive than the above, the airspace management issues will limit this to emergency services.
normzone, Jun 15 2017
  

       Not necessarily. If you declare a vertical window (say, 20-500ft) as dronespace, and require all drones to be fully autonomous, you could safely have a very, very high density of dronage. Bee swarms work OK.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 15 2017
  
      
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