Who, exactly, thought this was a workable idea? Two inches into the asphalt and covered with tar? I can't imagine how one, let alone a group, of civil engineers and the city's own engineers could be okay with this idea. I have so many questions.
1. What happens when the road needs to be resurfaced, nevermind the scoring of the pavement required to dig for and access other buried utilities. 2. How this won't accelerate deterioration of roads due to being a wound in the road that invites moisture, causing things like frost heave 3. How protected is the cable itself as asphalt shoves, slips, and creeps over time in places 4. Is the cable even meant to withstand the mechanical shock of traffic passing 2" or less above it over even 10 years?
The photos look absolutely atrocious given the short amount of time the stuff has been there.
Considering the phraseology you used in your assertion, I take it that you're fairly unfamiliar with how airspace works.
In the US, at least, UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the general term for things like drones) MUST be operated by someone with a UAS certificate from the FAA. Getting this certificate can be done online and the course teaches the student basic airspace knowledge, including the knowledge on where and, more importantly, where not to operate a UAS and who to contact if you do. Indeed, it's actually a subset of what a private pilot would lean, as someone with a PPL automatically has a UAS certificate. The point is, the requirements are already there, but most people think they're too cool for school and refuse to comply with those meddling gub'mint regulations.
Ultimately, it'll be the people who stay airspace-dumb on purpose who will ruin the party for other civilian UAS operators and perhaps the lives of unwitting passengers and crew. There are already costs incurred by drone strikes which, thankfully, haven't caused any deaths yet.
FUD? I think it does shed light on just how pervasive plastics are in our world now in ways we might not realize, especially when it comes to things that the people normally think are relatively pure and "clean", such as salt. It does show how unaware the effects on humans are - either at the micro level with table salt, or at the macro level when you combine all sources of uplastics in typical diets around the world.
Plastics contain more than just long-chain polymers. There are just gobs of different chemicals that can be locked up inside the structure of a given plastic which then slowly leach out over time. We've found that many of them are carcinogenic (or their breakdown products are carcinogenic), or even bio-mimics, such as BPA, and have been attributed to hormone-based diseases. We just don't know the extent of the deleterious effect all this has on ourselves, not to mention our food sources. So, the focus is not weird. It's actually really fsckin' important.
Camera bodies, and whether they're digital or film come and go. Honestly, I have no idea why people get so mesmerized by them. The real magic is in the lenses, and the photographer's ability to frame a scene. A "clear and nice" image doesn't come from the sensor; it comes from the glass you put in front of it and the ability of the photographer to regulate the light going through those lenses. Sensor performance is really neither here nor there in the vast majority of situations.
The point is to provide some semblence of consistency and easily-calculated time expectations between people who are in different places. Timezones, except when they occasionally change, provide this. If I live in NYC and I travel to Tokyo, I don't need to ask the locals "what time is lunch here?" because the answer is the same - it's at 12pm local time. What time do people pack up and leave for home? 5pm. No guessing or gross unfamilairity. If I'm in Tokyo where it's 1pm and need to call someone in Frankfurt, I'd don't need to fret wondering if I'm about to wake someone up, because right now I would know that it's 5am there and it's too early to call them. If it's 13:00 in Tokyo AND Frankfurt under a "no timezones" world, I'll still need to go reference something to figure out if people there are awake.
Timezones are useful. As for DST, I'd say it's less useful at lower latitudes where summer/winter day lengths are more consistent. It's inteded to be used at higher latitudes. Obviously the closer you get to the arctic or antarctic circles, it begins to not really matter again.
People tend to focus on domains when it comes to WHOIS usage; however I've found myself using it more to see who administrates/SWIPP'd a given block of IPs rather than looking up often inaccurate or obfuscated info on domain ownership.
I'd like to see a drone safely deliver anything in bad weather (think: icing), low viz, or windy conditions, and such. You know, the wx conditions which even modern aircraft need supplemental, external systems to safely deal with whereas the UPS truck doesn't, short of unsafe road conditions which would affect everyone anyway.
Not all aircraft have GPS navigation, or even electrical systems to support one. Yes, some aircraft lack an alternator and battery - thus they have no electrical system and are not required to have a transponder or other electronic navigation equipment, other than perhaps a battery-powered radio. The engine's spark plugs are fired by magnetos turned by the engine itself (so yes, these types of planes also need to be hand-propped to start, because there's no battery to juice a starter)
Long story short, GPS or its requirements aren't as widespread as you may think.
Model rockets are in fact governed as aircraft in that one must also adhere to TFRs and other permanent airspace rules. The thing is that the typical Estes hobby rocket's incursion is so fleeting that it doesn't really matter, and the people engaged in this hobby are so comparatively few that they're pretty serious about it, along with handling things like tubes of packed black powder, that they generally don't cause trouble due to their innate sense of responsibility. The high-performance rocketeers even coordinate with the FAA to arrange NOTAMs and even TFRs for their activity so that other users of the airspace are notified and may plan accordingly.
But, I have to say this - your attitude, though, does fit 2 of the 5 Aviation Hazardous Attitudes[1]. Remember, these regulations are *not* about YOU.
Regulations cannot be tailor-made to everyone, and while you inspecting your roof with a drone 20 miles from the nearest airport is in reality a so-what deal, the FAA isn't going to spell out every possible exception to every FAR just to suit every drone-flying nerd in every possible situation. There are people (such as the one TFA is about) who completely flaunt the FARs and don't exercise even basic common sense on top of it. They don't understand that all drone pilots are now sharing airspace with actual aircraft, and thus all occupants of the airspace must play by the same rulebook. This matters most in the most congested airspace, and are largely the target audience of these rules.
We already have stories from around the world where dumbasses are flying their drones along major airport approach and departure paths, with near-misses now being a common report. These rules, as draconian to the non-pilot normies as they may seem, are an attempt to get people to act straight and not do this shit because no one wants to find out the hard way what happens when a drone collides with an aircraft that's on climb-out - an aircraft that might be experiencing a flame-out on one engine due to unrelated problems, only to have a drone get sucked into the one remaining operational one. No one thought USAir 1549 would happen - until it actually did. Same goes for a lot of other accidents, be they mechanical, environmental, or human-caused.
You have a drone, that's great. This also makes you a pilot. I highly suggest that you start thinking like one, and then follow that up with acting like one. Given your missive above, the below link would be a great place to start (and yes, these hazardous attitudes and their antidotes are questions indeed posed on the PPL written exam.)
I cannot see Tesla's long view in their reasons here. They are a high-profile set of companies (Solar City, Tesla, Boring Co. and SpaceX among others) and this news has hit major outlets - not just niche industry rags. It would be in their best interest to get out in front of this and provide some detail; but they have not. The arbitrariness of the reasons given for firing employees en masse is now what is in the history books for them, and this will surly dissuade talent from desiring to work for a Musk company in the future. Uber is another big-name entity that is walking this same line due to the narrative around its work environment.
I travelled from Maryland to Oregon to attend the Symbiosis music and art festival that was taking place on private land in the middle of the Ochoco National Forest outside of Prineville, Oregon. I had been to a total solar eclipse before in Turkey in 2006, and this was a reunion of sorts as I was meeting up with some friends I hadn't seen since then.
I brought a lightweight tracking mount with me (Fornax Lightrack II) and mounted a Canon 5D Mk. 2 camera with EF 400mm 5.6L prime lens + 1.4x teleconverter on it, which tracked the sun and took a photo every 30 seconds through a 77mm diameter filter from Thousand Oaks Optical. When I get enough time, I'm going to string these into a time lapse. I removed the filter during totality and started taking bracketed shots, and replaced the filter onto the lens after totality.
Oregon's a really nice state. I travelled around a bit after the festival and the night skies here are to die for. Here's some shots that I have up so far. https://daleghent.com/gallery/...
Not so much burning a hole in anything, but certainly heating up the sensor and surrounding components to temperatures that will permanently damage them. A 80mm objective lens will focus about 60W of energy from the Sun. Spread across the surface area of a 35mm/APS-C/APS-H or 4/3rds sensor, that will heat up fast. Burning holes happens at prime focus, which would be your eyeball when looking through the viewfinder. No bueno.
There's a sense of reflection that humans have that I have yet seen AI mimic in a meaningful way, and this is especially important in the realm of very personal - and perhaps embarrassing - medical conditions or situations, the details of which could hold meaningful sway over diagnosis or treatment options.
In other words, a human doctor who is patient, listening and experienced can "call the bluff" of a patient who might not be volunteering vital information because the patient is embarrassed about it or maybe not even aware that such information might be even relevant... or just plain forgetful. The other end of the spectrum exists as well - a human doc can tell if the patient is handing them a big fish story in order to induce a specific treatment option, or is even displaying a bit of Munchausen syndrome. Will an AI be able to intuit these or will it always flat-out believe the patient?
It's not/just/ about CO2, however. LNG is still fossil, yes, but given a choice between the two I'd rather have it over coal any day lest we continue to spew heavy metals, particulate matter, and other toxins into the air by continuing to burn coal.
Further predicating a well-paying job on a degree inflames other problem areas - mainly, around poorer US citizens who cannot or could not afford an advanced degree - or any degree at all - having access to well-paying jobs IF they can demonstrate the skills and build the experience needed to satisfy its requirements. I'm one of these people, myself. I'm now on my 22nd year in this industry, and I credit a lot of luck and hard work to get to where I am now financially. A degree was never a factor in this journey.
I understand the importance of such degrees in places such as India, but I think this is an anachronism in some areas, especially if the degree comes from a place where the emphasis was on rote learning rather than independent discovery and natural knowledge maturation.
Can you imagine the uproar if drones were required to equip a WAAS GPS and ADS-B Out?
The problem we pilots have with the drone-flying public is that we have no confidence that the drone-flying public have much of a concept of airspace, how to navigate it, and do so safely. Thankfully, nothing bad has happened yet - just a few newsworthy reports of near-misses and at least 1 suspected (but not confirmed, the last I read) collision between a UAS and an aircraft. Sadly, it probably is just a matter of time where a UAS and plane collides, and the UAS pilot was completely oblivious to how to actually fly.
Yeah, agree. The general public isn't going to grok airspace classification or the 3D aspects of them (surface to 10k?, 500' to 10k? what???) A lot of drone operators (and that means everyone with one) got a very abrupt introduction to nomenclature, rules, and concepts that we pilots are familiar with, and part of me wonders just how many shirk their need to learn these things because they just don't take them seriously.
No idea why the cops would even need to ask Amazon. All they need to do to find them is look in the dungeons below a particular pizza joint in Washington DC.
This, plus the aspect of us steadily outsourcing personal decisions and choices. Makes me wonder if the future General Public will actually be capable of thinking for themselves without having some technological crutch be a part of it.
The conveniences conveyed by GH are undeniable - ready-made code dev environments with widely-used issue and progress tracking, integration with other project management tools (zenhub, jira) and all in all eliminates and centralizes one's OSS and private project interests.
However, as more and more Internet Infrastucture-ish projects have moved to GH, either completely or in major parts, I've become worried. OpenSSL, several Apache.org projects, some OSes (Linux, FreeBSD, illumos), and so on call GH their home now, or at least use it in some substantial way. Eggs in Baskets analogies apply, and given the security landscape of things now, one must at least pause and weigh the Pros and Cons of this centralized and trusted repo for so many important pieces of code.
You're missing an important distinction - SmartOS is based on illumos, which was forked years ago off of OpenSolaris when Oracle decided to shut that down.
SmartOS is thus illumos, and illumos and Oracle Solaris have diverged a good bit in the intervening years.
Many residential streets in Takoma Park (I live just north of there; and have several friends who I visit in TP) are narrow; with cars parked on both sides and about 1.5 lanes worth of travel space down the middle. When these turn in to alternatives for primary roads because an app told people to go there, yes it becomes a problem, and more than just a quality of life problem.
First off, these streets do not have the capacity of the primary roads that people are bleeding off of, and second, people who are directed to these more constricted alternate routes are probably more likely to disregard any control signage such as stop signs and just roll through them with the rest of the blob, as well as blocking the typically small intersections when said blob comes to a halt. Never underestimate the disregard for general safety or basic traffic laws that people can have when a herd of them are forced to move through an area not designed to handle them.
Slashdot Mirror
Who, exactly, thought this was a workable idea? Two inches into the asphalt and covered with tar? I can't imagine how one, let alone a group, of civil engineers and the city's own engineers could be okay with this idea. I have so many questions.
1. What happens when the road needs to be resurfaced, nevermind the scoring of the pavement required to dig for and access other buried utilities.
2. How this won't accelerate deterioration of roads due to being a wound in the road that invites moisture, causing things like frost heave
3. How protected is the cable itself as asphalt shoves, slips, and creeps over time in places
4. Is the cable even meant to withstand the mechanical shock of traffic passing 2" or less above it over even 10 years?
The photos look absolutely atrocious given the short amount of time the stuff has been there.
Considering the phraseology you used in your assertion, I take it that you're fairly unfamiliar with how airspace works.
In the US, at least, UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the general term for things like drones) MUST be operated by someone with a UAS certificate from the FAA. Getting this certificate can be done online and the course teaches the student basic airspace knowledge, including the knowledge on where and, more importantly, where not to operate a UAS and who to contact if you do. Indeed, it's actually a subset of what a private pilot would lean, as someone with a PPL automatically has a UAS certificate. The point is, the requirements are already there, but most people think they're too cool for school and refuse to comply with those meddling gub'mint regulations.
Ultimately, it'll be the people who stay airspace-dumb on purpose who will ruin the party for other civilian UAS operators and perhaps the lives of unwitting passengers and crew. There are already costs incurred by drone strikes which, thankfully, haven't caused any deaths yet.
Here's an idea: Take each of the regional server clusters down when it's not that region's prime time. Groundbreaking, I know, but it might just work.
Given how often the servers are down for maintenance for the PC version during US prime time.
FUD? I think it does shed light on just how pervasive plastics are in our world now in ways we might not realize, especially when it comes to things that the people normally think are relatively pure and "clean", such as salt. It does show how unaware the effects on humans are - either at the micro level with table salt, or at the macro level when you combine all sources of uplastics in typical diets around the world.
Plastics contain more than just long-chain polymers. There are just gobs of different chemicals that can be locked up inside the structure of a given plastic which then slowly leach out over time. We've found that many of them are carcinogenic (or their breakdown products are carcinogenic), or even bio-mimics, such as BPA, and have been attributed to hormone-based diseases. We just don't know the extent of the deleterious effect all this has on ourselves, not to mention our food sources. So, the focus is not weird. It's actually really fsckin' important.
Camera bodies, and whether they're digital or film come and go. Honestly, I have no idea why people get so mesmerized by them. The real magic is in the lenses, and the photographer's ability to frame a scene. A "clear and nice" image doesn't come from the sensor; it comes from the glass you put in front of it and the ability of the photographer to regulate the light going through those lenses. Sensor performance is really neither here nor there in the vast majority of situations.
Just hope that they don't demonstrate their stupidity by careening into you / anyone.
The point is to provide some semblence of consistency and easily-calculated time expectations between people who are in different places. Timezones, except when they occasionally change, provide this. If I live in NYC and I travel to Tokyo, I don't need to ask the locals "what time is lunch here?" because the answer is the same - it's at 12pm local time. What time do people pack up and leave for home? 5pm. No guessing or gross unfamilairity. If I'm in Tokyo where it's 1pm and need to call someone in Frankfurt, I'd don't need to fret wondering if I'm about to wake someone up, because right now I would know that it's 5am there and it's too early to call them. If it's 13:00 in Tokyo AND Frankfurt under a "no timezones" world, I'll still need to go reference something to figure out if people there are awake.
Timezones are useful. As for DST, I'd say it's less useful at lower latitudes where summer/winter day lengths are more consistent. It's inteded to be used at higher latitudes. Obviously the closer you get to the arctic or antarctic circles, it begins to not really matter again.
People tend to focus on domains when it comes to WHOIS usage; however I've found myself using it more to see who administrates/SWIPP'd a given block of IPs rather than looking up often inaccurate or obfuscated info on domain ownership.
I'd like to see a drone safely deliver anything in bad weather (think: icing), low viz, or windy conditions, and such. You know, the wx conditions which even modern aircraft need supplemental, external systems to safely deal with whereas the UPS truck doesn't, short of unsafe road conditions which would affect everyone anyway.
Not all aircraft have GPS navigation, or even electrical systems to support one. Yes, some aircraft lack an alternator and battery - thus they have no electrical system and are not required to have a transponder or other electronic navigation equipment, other than perhaps a battery-powered radio. The engine's spark plugs are fired by magnetos turned by the engine itself (so yes, these types of planes also need to be hand-propped to start, because there's no battery to juice a starter)
Long story short, GPS or its requirements aren't as widespread as you may think.
Model rockets are in fact governed as aircraft in that one must also adhere to TFRs and other permanent airspace rules. The thing is that the typical Estes hobby rocket's incursion is so fleeting that it doesn't really matter, and the people engaged in this hobby are so comparatively few that they're pretty serious about it, along with handling things like tubes of packed black powder, that they generally don't cause trouble due to their innate sense of responsibility. The high-performance rocketeers even coordinate with the FAA to arrange NOTAMs and even TFRs for their activity so that other users of the airspace are notified and may plan accordingly.
But, I have to say this - your attitude, though, does fit 2 of the 5 Aviation Hazardous Attitudes[1]. Remember, these regulations are *not* about YOU.
Regulations cannot be tailor-made to everyone, and while you inspecting your roof with a drone 20 miles from the nearest airport is in reality a so-what deal, the FAA isn't going to spell out every possible exception to every FAR just to suit every drone-flying nerd in every possible situation. There are people (such as the one TFA is about) who completely flaunt the FARs and don't exercise even basic common sense on top of it. They don't understand that all drone pilots are now sharing airspace with actual aircraft, and thus all occupants of the airspace must play by the same rulebook. This matters most in the most congested airspace, and are largely the target audience of these rules.
We already have stories from around the world where dumbasses are flying their drones along major airport approach and departure paths, with near-misses now being a common report. These rules, as draconian to the non-pilot normies as they may seem, are an attempt to get people to act straight and not do this shit because no one wants to find out the hard way what happens when a drone collides with an aircraft that's on climb-out - an aircraft that might be experiencing a flame-out on one engine due to unrelated problems, only to have a drone get sucked into the one remaining operational one. No one thought USAir 1549 would happen - until it actually did. Same goes for a lot of other accidents, be they mechanical, environmental, or human-caused.
You have a drone, that's great. This also makes you a pilot. I highly suggest that you start thinking like one, and then follow that up with acting like one. Given your missive above, the below link would be a great place to start (and yes, these hazardous attitudes and their antidotes are questions indeed posed on the PPL written exam.)
[1] http://aviationknowledge.wikid...
I cannot see Tesla's long view in their reasons here. They are a high-profile set of companies (Solar City, Tesla, Boring Co. and SpaceX among others) and this news has hit major outlets - not just niche industry rags. It would be in their best interest to get out in front of this and provide some detail; but they have not. The arbitrariness of the reasons given for firing employees en masse is now what is in the history books for them, and this will surly dissuade talent from desiring to work for a Musk company in the future. Uber is another big-name entity that is walking this same line due to the narrative around its work environment.
I travelled from Maryland to Oregon to attend the Symbiosis music and art festival that was taking place on private land in the middle of the Ochoco National Forest outside of Prineville, Oregon. I had been to a total solar eclipse before in Turkey in 2006, and this was a reunion of sorts as I was meeting up with some friends I hadn't seen since then.
I brought a lightweight tracking mount with me (Fornax Lightrack II) and mounted a Canon 5D Mk. 2 camera with EF 400mm 5.6L prime lens + 1.4x teleconverter on it, which tracked the sun and took a photo every 30 seconds through a 77mm diameter filter from Thousand Oaks Optical. When I get enough time, I'm going to string these into a time lapse. I removed the filter during totality and started taking bracketed shots, and replaced the filter onto the lens after totality.
Oregon's a really nice state. I travelled around a bit after the festival and the night skies here are to die for. Here's some shots that I have up so far. https://daleghent.com/gallery/...
Not so much burning a hole in anything, but certainly heating up the sensor and surrounding components to temperatures that will permanently damage them. A 80mm objective lens will focus about 60W of energy from the Sun. Spread across the surface area of a 35mm/APS-C/APS-H or 4/3rds sensor, that will heat up fast. Burning holes happens at prime focus, which would be your eyeball when looking through the viewfinder. No bueno.
Be wary of this.
There's a sense of reflection that humans have that I have yet seen AI mimic in a meaningful way, and this is especially important in the realm of very personal - and perhaps embarrassing - medical conditions or situations, the details of which could hold meaningful sway over diagnosis or treatment options.
In other words, a human doctor who is patient, listening and experienced can "call the bluff" of a patient who might not be volunteering vital information because the patient is embarrassed about it or maybe not even aware that such information might be even relevant... or just plain forgetful. The other end of the spectrum exists as well - a human doc can tell if the patient is handing them a big fish story in order to induce a specific treatment option, or is even displaying a bit of Munchausen syndrome. Will an AI be able to intuit these or will it always flat-out believe the patient?
It's not /just/ about CO2, however. LNG is still fossil, yes, but given a choice between the two I'd rather have it over coal any day lest we continue to spew heavy metals, particulate matter, and other toxins into the air by continuing to burn coal.
Further predicating a well-paying job on a degree inflames other problem areas - mainly, around poorer US citizens who cannot or could not afford an advanced degree - or any degree at all - having access to well-paying jobs IF they can demonstrate the skills and build the experience needed to satisfy its requirements. I'm one of these people, myself. I'm now on my 22nd year in this industry, and I credit a lot of luck and hard work to get to where I am now financially. A degree was never a factor in this journey.
I understand the importance of such degrees in places such as India, but I think this is an anachronism in some areas, especially if the degree comes from a place where the emphasis was on rote learning rather than independent discovery and natural knowledge maturation.
Can you imagine the uproar if drones were required to equip a WAAS GPS and ADS-B Out?
The problem we pilots have with the drone-flying public is that we have no confidence that the drone-flying public have much of a concept of airspace, how to navigate it, and do so safely. Thankfully, nothing bad has happened yet - just a few newsworthy reports of near-misses and at least 1 suspected (but not confirmed, the last I read) collision between a UAS and an aircraft. Sadly, it probably is just a matter of time where a UAS and plane collides, and the UAS pilot was completely oblivious to how to actually fly.
Yeah, agree. The general public isn't going to grok airspace classification or the 3D aspects of them (surface to 10k?, 500' to 10k? what???) A lot of drone operators (and that means everyone with one) got a very abrupt introduction to nomenclature, rules, and concepts that we pilots are familiar with, and part of me wonders just how many shirk their need to learn these things because they just don't take them seriously.
No idea why the cops would even need to ask Amazon. All they need to do to find them is look in the dungeons below a particular pizza joint in Washington DC.
This, plus the aspect of us steadily outsourcing personal decisions and choices. Makes me wonder if the future General Public will actually be capable of thinking for themselves without having some technological crutch be a part of it.
The conveniences conveyed by GH are undeniable - ready-made code dev environments with widely-used issue and progress tracking, integration with other project management tools (zenhub, jira) and all in all eliminates and centralizes one's OSS and private project interests.
However, as more and more Internet Infrastucture-ish projects have moved to GH, either completely or in major parts, I've become worried. OpenSSL, several Apache.org projects, some OSes (Linux, FreeBSD, illumos), and so on call GH their home now, or at least use it in some substantial way. Eggs in Baskets analogies apply, and given the security landscape of things now, one must at least pause and weigh the Pros and Cons of this centralized and trusted repo for so many important pieces of code.
You're missing an important distinction - SmartOS is based on illumos, which was forked years ago off of OpenSolaris when Oracle decided to shut that down.
SmartOS is thus illumos, and illumos and Oracle Solaris have diverged a good bit in the intervening years.
Many residential streets in Takoma Park (I live just north of there; and have several friends who I visit in TP) are narrow; with cars parked on both sides and about 1.5 lanes worth of travel space down the middle. When these turn in to alternatives for primary roads because an app told people to go there, yes it becomes a problem, and more than just a quality of life problem.
First off, these streets do not have the capacity of the primary roads that people are bleeding off of, and second, people who are directed to these more constricted alternate routes are probably more likely to disregard any control signage such as stop signs and just roll through them with the rest of the blob, as well as blocking the typically small intersections when said blob comes to a halt. Never underestimate the disregard for general safety or basic traffic laws that people can have when a herd of them are forced to move through an area not designed to handle them.