Aside from "impress your friends and family" (with your stupidity?) I can only tell you how *I* ended up in a house much too big.
I'm a tinkerer, with a lot of hobbies, so it's worth something to me to have room to work on model planes, DJ lighting rigs, and all manner of other things. Ideally I'd like to live at Jamie Hyneman's M5 Industries shop.:)
When I was shopping for a home, houses were being sold in about a day or two, so buyers really didn't have time to think much about a specific house, to analyze things before putting in an offer. I was shopping for about 1,900-2,100 sq feet when I came across one in the same price range that has 3,500. That's an extra 1,400 FOR FREE*. I don't need all that room, but I'll take it if I get it for free, I figured.
What I didn't account for, because I hadn't planned on buying something this big, was that insurance cost is based on REPLACEMENT cost, not purchase price. So my insurance is based on what it would cost to build a brand new 3,500 sq foot house. Taxable value also uses square footage as a major factor.
* One reason I got an extra 1,400 sq feet "for free" was because the previous owner hadn't done various simple maintenance and upgrade tasks. There were several jobs around the house that will each take anywhere from a few minutes (replacing worn door knobs) to a weekend (painting some rooms) which they never got around to doing. The kitchen light is the old style with two four-foot fluorescent tubes; recessed can lights are in style now. It'll take a couple hours to upgrade that. (But I'm waiting to see what new styles come out based on high output LED technology).
> No I do not live in Silicon Valley. I live in a crappy, somewhat iffy, part of Orange County California. You can't pin this on lack growth/development.
You anticipated my question. I lived on Orange County when I was a kid. I now live in a very nice Dallas suburb. For 3,500 sq feet, I paid $240,000, 18 months ago. I say I paid $240K - I paid about $19K or $20K out of my pocket. The rest of the down payment was seller concessions, a rebate from the agent, etc.
If I had bought a brand new house in a nice neighborhood, I would get maybe 2,100 sq feet for the price. My house hadn't had updates since it was built in the 1990s. The sellers should have spent $10K on updates and sold the house for $35,000 more. Stupid shit I fixed in 15 minutes, like an incorrectly wired outlet, cost them thousands of dollars at resale.
Along with wondering where you live, I also wondered exactly what your "STEM degree" is and if you actively manage your career.
It has been my understanding that one reason for a deposition is discovery, to find out what questions a jury needs to hear the answer to. For example, if during deposition you asked Bill Cosby "have you ever drugged a woman" and he said "yes, I have", that's something the jury should hear and you'd ask the same question in testimony before the jury. You're after asking that in deposition, you can't ask the question in open court, for the jury to hear?
It has also been my understanding that it is common to depose someone as soon after the events as possible, while their memory is still fresh, then point out if they change their answer at trial. In fact here's a script from Indiana law school showing the proper way to point out when a witness gives an answer in court that is different from the answer they gave at deposition:
Do you happen to remember which rule number says you can't ask a question in open court which you asked at deposition? Any explanation of why that would be the case?
Btw when I wrote "Average home sizes have tripled, because apparently we'd rather buy ever larger homes and TVs instead of working less", I was sitting outside my 3,500 square foot house. I share this house with my wife and daughter.
My mom grew up in a 1,200 sq foot house, in a family of six. They had 1,200 sq feet for the family, I have 1,200 sq feet PER PERSON. My dad's family home was probably 850 sq feet, for a family of five.
I might be silly. I *could* instead work a three-month contract once a year, taking 9 months off each year, and have a standard of living more like my parents grew up with.
Real (inflation adjusted) median household income has in fact increased 265% since Keynes wrote that. Average home size has also tripled, because apparently we'd rather buy ever larger homes and TVs instead of working less.
The thrust developed by a prop at a given RPM is proportional to its diameter to the 2/3 power, multiplied by its pitch. In other words, the cube root of the diameter squared. As an easy example let's use a prop of diameter 1, pitch 1, and a prop of diameter 10, pitch 10.
1 squared is 1, and the cube root is 1, pitch is 1, so the thrust is 1 unit. 10 squared is 100, the cube root is 4.6, pitch is 10. So a prop 10 times as big produces 46 times the power.
A quadcopter "10 times as big" is 10x width, 10x height, 10x depth, so 1,000 times the volume, and approximately 1,000 times the weight.
When you scale up 10 times, you get a thousand times the weight, and 46 times as much thrust. That's a big problem.
We saw earlier that a prop 10 times the size gives 46 times as much thrust, so we want bigger props. On a quadcopter the radius of the prop is limited to no more than half the diagonal across the fuselage. We can only get bigger props by making the whole craft bigger, but that makes the problem worse. So we need a way to have a prop bigger, without making both the width and height bigger.
Enter the helicopter. The helicopter design lets us put a 46â(TM) prop in a fuse that's only 9' wide. That's why you see people flying around in helicopters, and you don't see people flying around in quadcopters.
I may have been a little unclear about one point. You might ask how does that identify me. It doesn't give them your name of course, but Google doesn't care about your name.
They put you in a group, and profile that group. The smaller the group, the more specific the profile, the better that profile represents exactly you.
Imagine an "advertiser might say "Mac users tend to buy _____, so show these ads to Mac users". Then we start to get more specific, "Mac users in North East Chicago. How about "Mac users in Northeast Chicago who have a Microsoft Office 2010 installed on their Mac Pro", what ads should they see?
Your group is something like "Windows 7 users in Northeast Chicago who visit Slashdot and Breitbart multiple times per day and have a Microsoft Office 2010 installed, don't have Java but do have Flash 8.06b, and use DSL and use Chrome 41.0473.83.1 and don't log in, and still run 1024X768 resolution and launch a freshly installed copy of the VM every day and have...". They've profiled that group of people. There are about 1 members of that group. That group is you, and maybe one other person like you.
I use these techniques to catch bad guys trying to log in using your user name and password. If someone on a Mac in California claims to be you, but just a few hours ago I saw you still in Chicago on your Windows 7 VM, I'm going to be awfully suspicious of the dude in California who claims to be you.
I can't say for sure how Google's tracking works, but I know how mine works, and we can be pretty sure that Google's is better than mine. Mine would "recognize" you pretty well.
Basically, you'd be lumped in with all of the other people who use that exact same VM, on the ISP, in the same area, and visit the same sites - basically just you.:) Here's a bit about how it works.
First we have your IP address/24, which puts you in a group of a couple hundred people. We ignore the last octet of the IP because that changes. We also record IP/20.
Next up we have the User Agent, which looks like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2227.1 Safari/537.36
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.4; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2225.0 Safari/537.36
So if you're on Windows 7, that's going to separate you from Windows 8 and Windows 10 users, etc. Note also the very fine-grained Chrome build number. Not just version 41, but version 41.0.2227.1 for one person, someone else is on 41.0.2225.0, etc.
Here's the gold mine mine right here. The Accept header. Check out the most recent person trying to log in to the site I checked:
I can distinguish between him and someone with the EXACT same computer image, but who hasn't installed Silverlight. There are about 50 different applications that can show up in the Accept header. The exact mix of applications you have installed on that VM really help distinguish between you and the only other person in your neighborhood, on your ISP, who behaves similarly to you, using a fresh VM and not logging in.
Of course you're talking about being tracked by the company who made your browser, so they see you visit Slashdot twice a day, and whatever other sites you visit. that, combined with everything else above, distinguishes you from pretty much anyone else.
That's not even getting into cookies, Flash cookies, local storage, super cookies, etc.
Because the Bebop 2 now includes a GPS module, it is able follow step-by-step instructions given by the pilot, such as "fly 50 feet, turn left, then fly 30 feet". In US military terms, that's partial autonomy.
Full autonomous would include decision-making ability. A fully autonomous system can recognize it is on a collision course with another aircraft, and take appropriate action.
Partial or semi-autonomous is cool, it's fun - and you have to be standing there watching it, controller in hand, or it'll likely crash, or at least violate the law by flying over the two ladies who are jogging. So while cool, it's really not that autonomous since we're still needing to watch it carefully and make all the decisions.
So by your definition a paper airplane and a party balloon are drones?
In my opinion, any useful definition of "drone" needs to distinguish between a paper airplane vs X-47B, Triton, BAMS, etc.
The FAA doesn't use the term drone, so there is no definition from them. The use Unmanned Aerial System and "autonomous". Under the the first draft of the recent UAS regulations, a paper airplane was a UAS and required a license. The draft was slightly improved before it went into effect.
The word "drone" is used for two very different things.
Actual drones fly autonomously, and are normally fixed wing airplanes. Examples include the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, and MQ-9 Reaper.
What this article calls "drones" are RC quadcopters. As the article mentioned, they were flown from by the ground, by radio, just like the RC planes that starting gaining popularity 80 years ago. Quadcopters are fun toys. Because of some fundamental physics, quadcopters get dramatically less efficient as they get larger. The concept works quite well for a toy three inches across. Efficiency drops as you approach the larger popular size, which is 250mm (10 inches) across. Once you get up to about a meter across you're hitting the practical limit. You CAN build one bigger, but it's performance and especially flight time completely sucks compared to a plane or helicopter of similar size. You're never going to put thousands of pounds of military equipment and weapons systems on a quadcopter; it just doesn't make sense.
Can a military use small, unmanned aircraft effectively? Absolutely, and that's been US military doctrine for most of the time since cruise missiles were developed in the 1970s, and especially since the Tomahawk in 1983. Several proposed new aircraft have been cancelled in favor of missiles, which can carry out the same mission at lower cost, in dollars and lives. The venerable B-52 can quickly carry TWENTY AGM-86 cruise missiles to within 1500 miles of the targets, anywhere in the world, and those missiles then autonomously fly the last 1,500 miles to their targets.
There's really little military need for small, low-performance aircraft to fly around in patterns. Generally, you want to get to the target and destroy it quickly. That's what missiles do. Other aircraft can loiter maintaining situational awareness, watching, then call the missile strikes. There's little need for the recon aircraft to also be the one to strike the target.
In some hostile airspace, against moving targets or targets you can't get good satellite views of, you sometimes want to look, then fire a weapon. For that you want fast, stealthy aircraft which carry enough armament to destroy the target in one strike. A large group of slow, non-stealthy toys, which carry no more than a hand grenade, isn't particularly useful.
Last summer our "drone" (quadcopter) group in Dallas set the record for the most flown individually, as opposed to Intel's system in which a computer flew them all as a group. We have a hundred people standing in a field, all flying our toys simultaneously.
I wish the marketers hadn't labeled RC quadcopters "drones" because it creates confusion. An actual drone flies autonomously. Most drones are fixed-wing aircraft, airplanes. That includes the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, MQ-9 Reaper, etc. What this article calls "drones" are radio controlled quadcopters. RC quadcopters are just like the RC model planes your great-grandfather flew eighty years ago, except quadcopters are less efficient and they can hover.
Most of what you've said is true, but you missed what has made Google not only by far the largest marketing company in history, but one of the world's largest and most successful companies. You've missed what they have that nobody else does, their number one most valuable asset.
What marketing data companies used to do, and most still do, is collect information about leads and sell their lists to each other. Company A would sell their list to Company B. Company B would combine that with some of their own data and sell it to company C. Company C would merge it with some data from D, and sell the combined list to Company A. They all ended up with a lot of the same data, the data going round and round in circles. None of the companies had that much valuable data that wasn't already in the hands of many other companies. A lot of these traditional market data companies only lasted a few years. Some survive, but aren't household names, they aren't major companies like the big manufacturing companies, entertainment companies, etc.
Google did something different. Google realized their data was only really valuable if it was data that other companies didn't have. So they set up AdWords, allowing customers to place ads that make use of the data, without ever letting anyone else actually get the data. By never, ever selling the data they keep ahold of their most valuable asset. That's why Anthem Marketing is worth about $16 million and Google is worth $750 BILLION. Because Google guards their data like Coke guards their secret recipe.
I'm not really a space nerd, so no, I don't look at satellite tracks on 2D maps. I'm a computer nerd, a time nerd, and a few other things, but not a space nerd.
It DOES make sense after you think about it for a minute, or if you're uses to seeing that.
Thank you and all who think like you for trying to help my kid, who is both black and female. It's appreciated.
My kid, a black woman, does not in fact need your condescending "help" to contribute to any open source project. It's just patronizing and insulting for you to act like she can't do whatever she decides to do, on your own merit with her own skills - to say that she needs your help.
What she needs from you guys is for you to instead spend that time proofreading and unit testing your own shit, so she doesn't have to spend her time fixing your mistakes. The thing is, she's smarter than you guys. She's even smarter than Bruce, and Bruce is a pretty smart guy.
Sounds like you live in the bay area? 99.99% of the world isn't San Francisco. Open source projects especially are world-wide endeavors, and by far most people world wide are not "cis-male, white and straight, the majority of that number are all three at once".
Heck, even in your little bay area garden, most people aren't male and straight, if you haven't noticed.
> If you already happen to have a demographically-representative set of people working with you, you don't have to use it. However, until that day arrives, programs like Outreachy can help you to rectify that situation.
I don't know, or care, how many people I work with call themselves "gender-free", how many enjoy sex with women, or any of that. All of that is SO completely irrelevant to work. You and they seriously think that when I'm reviewing code submissions, to make sure they work correctly and have appropriate security, I should make sure to ask who the coder sleeps with? It's okay to introduce a security problem, if the coder has sex with multiple people over the age of 70, I guess? Your thinking is just bizarre.
> You don't have to care, and are in fact being encouraged to not care.
What part of "requirements: you must be transgender" do you not understand?
The Democrat raises some good questions in that letter.
I did notice some of the questions are things you've already answered in this thread, for example you've said it was official trip where they all went together, with the government paying for it.
> I believe that the whole point of this is to get more of these individuals who can do the work
Perhaps so. I can't guess how many people involved actually thought that they are missing out on a bunch of trannies who for some reason couldn't submit code without being specifically invited. I don't know how many of the people of involved were raised on virtue signaling.
What I DO know is that the actual results they are getting is that people who can and DO work full time on the project are leaving, because they want it to be about the code, not about people who wish they didn't have a penis.
> at a function paid for by the government including travel > it's an official function that they went to as a group, so it stands to reason that they're there in official capacity and all travel etc is reimbursed. It's the way the gov functions. No one goes to a gov work function without travel orders
Now what you've been saying makes sense to me. You think the Conservative Political Action Conference is "an official function" that is "paid for by the government". You think the commissioners "all went there as a group", as a "government work function" based on "travel orders". Based on those assumptions, a lot of what you said would make sense.
I'm afraid you're mistaken, though, none of those are factually true. CPAC is a private event hosted by American Conservative Union, paid for by donors, not "an official function paid for by the government". They didn't all go there as a group, two conservative commissioners attended.
These are the official requirements for the program he objects to, copy/pasted from their web page: -- You must meet one of the following criteria: You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree).
You live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or permanent resident living aboard, AND you are a person of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander --
They have decided to explicitly NOT treat people the same. You MUST be transgender or something in order to participate in the program and get the benefits.
Most of the people I work with in open source, I don't know anything about their sexuality and I don't care. Not one bit. I care about the code - does it work, and has it been tested to be be sure that it works. Requiring me t inquire into someone's sexual preferences in order to determine how to process their code submissions would turn me off greatly as well.
Well good, we're making progress then. You've decided you agree with me, the Special Counsel, and the Attorney General that the Commissioner's duties don't stop when he leaves office, he was on duty. I'm not sure where you got "travel provided by the FCC", but that doesn't matter at this point. The point to decide now is that unlike an hourly employee who is done working when they leave the premises, as a principal his duties to the taxpayer continue no matter where he goes, right?
Slashdot Mirror
> I don't get what people see in big houses.
Aside from "impress your friends and family" (with your stupidity?) I can only tell you how *I* ended up in a house much too big.
I'm a tinkerer, with a lot of hobbies, so it's worth something to me to have room to work on model planes, DJ lighting rigs, and all manner of other things. Ideally I'd like to live at Jamie Hyneman's M5 Industries shop. :)
When I was shopping for a home, houses were being sold in about a day or two, so buyers really didn't have time to think much about a specific house, to analyze things before putting in an offer. I was shopping for about 1,900-2,100 sq feet when I came across one in the same price range that has 3,500. That's an extra 1,400 FOR FREE*. I don't need all that room, but I'll take it if I get it for free, I figured.
What I didn't account for, because I hadn't planned on buying something this big, was that insurance cost is based on REPLACEMENT cost, not purchase price. So my insurance is based on what it would cost to build a brand new 3,500 sq foot house. Taxable value also uses square footage as a major factor.
* One reason I got an extra 1,400 sq feet "for free" was because the previous owner hadn't done various simple maintenance and upgrade tasks. There were several jobs around the house that will each take anywhere from a few minutes (replacing worn door knobs) to a weekend (painting some rooms) which they never got around to doing. The kitchen light is the old style with two four-foot fluorescent tubes; recessed can lights are in style now. It'll take a couple hours to upgrade that. (But I'm waiting to see what new styles come out based on high output LED technology).
That should be "I'm not too sure about hyperloop".
I think hyperlinks are pretty well proven now. Starting with HyperCard.
> you drive on interstate highways because Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander and not the penny-dick doubt chislers
Well said. :)
I'm not too sure about hyperlink - it's an interesting idea with a lot of unknowns. Leadership is proven thing, though.
> No I do not live in Silicon Valley. I live in a crappy, somewhat iffy, part of Orange County California. You can't pin this on lack growth/development.
You anticipated my question. I lived on Orange County when I was a kid. I now live in a very nice Dallas suburb. For 3,500 sq feet, I paid $240,000, 18 months ago. I say I paid $240K - I paid about $19K or $20K out of my pocket. The rest of the down payment was seller concessions, a rebate from the agent, etc.
If I had bought a brand new house in a nice neighborhood, I would get maybe 2,100 sq feet for the price. My house hadn't had updates since it was built in the 1990s. The sellers should have spent $10K on updates and sold the house for $35,000 more. Stupid shit I fixed in 15 minutes, like an incorrectly wired outlet, cost them thousands of dollars at resale.
Along with wondering where you live, I also wondered exactly what your "STEM degree" is and if you actively manage your career.
It has been my understanding that one reason for a deposition is discovery, to find out what questions a jury needs to hear the answer to. For example, if during deposition you asked Bill Cosby "have you ever drugged a woman" and he said "yes, I have", that's something the jury should hear and you'd ask the same question in testimony before the jury. You're after asking that in deposition, you can't ask the question in open court, for the jury to hear?
It has also been my understanding that it is common to depose someone as soon after the events as possible, while their memory is still fresh, then point out if they change their answer at trial. In fact here's a script from Indiana law school showing the proper way to point out when a witness gives an answer in court that is different from the answer they gave at deposition:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/ins...
Do you happen to remember which rule number says you can't ask a question in open court which you asked at deposition? Any explanation of why that would be the case?
Btw when I wrote "Average home sizes have tripled, because apparently we'd rather buy ever larger homes and TVs instead of working less", I was sitting outside my 3,500 square foot house. I share this house with my wife and daughter.
My mom grew up in a 1,200 sq foot house, in a family of six. They had 1,200 sq feet for the family, I have 1,200 sq feet PER PERSON. My dad's family home was probably 850 sq feet, for a family of five.
I might be silly. I *could* instead work a three-month contract once a year, taking 9 months off each year, and have a standard of living more like my parents grew up with.
Real (inflation adjusted) median household income has in fact increased 265% since Keynes wrote that. Average home size has also tripled, because apparently we'd rather buy ever larger homes and TVs instead of working less.
To put it simply and quickly:
The thrust developed by a prop at a given RPM is proportional to its diameter to the 2/3 power, multiplied by its pitch. In other words, the cube root of the diameter squared. As an easy example let's use a prop of diameter 1, pitch 1, and a prop of diameter 10, pitch 10.
1 squared is 1, and the cube root is 1, pitch is 1, so the thrust is 1 unit.
10 squared is 100, the cube root is 4.6, pitch is 10.
So a prop 10 times as big produces 46 times the power.
A quadcopter "10 times as big" is 10x width, 10x height, 10x depth, so 1,000 times the volume, and approximately 1,000 times the weight.
When you scale up 10 times, you get a thousand times the weight, and 46 times as much thrust. That's a big problem.
We saw earlier that a prop 10 times the size gives 46 times as much thrust, so we want bigger props. On a quadcopter the radius of the prop is limited to no more than half the diagonal across the fuselage. We can only get bigger props by making the whole craft bigger, but that makes the problem worse. So we need a way to have a prop bigger, without making both the width and height bigger.
Enter the helicopter. The helicopter design lets us put a 46â(TM) prop in a fuse that's only 9' wide. That's why you see people flying around in helicopters, and you don't see people flying around in quadcopters.
I may have been a little unclear about one point. You might ask how does that identify me. It doesn't give them your name of course, but Google doesn't care about your name.
They put you in a group, and profile that group. The smaller the group, the more specific the profile, the better that profile represents exactly you.
Imagine an "advertiser might say "Mac users tend to buy _____, so show these ads to Mac users". Then we start to get more specific, "Mac users in North East Chicago. How about "Mac users in Northeast Chicago who have a Microsoft Office 2010 installed on their Mac Pro", what ads should they see?
Your group is something like "Windows 7 users in Northeast Chicago who visit Slashdot and Breitbart multiple times per day and have a Microsoft Office 2010 installed, don't have Java but do have Flash 8.06b, and use DSL and use Chrome 41.0473.83.1 and don't log in, and still run 1024X768 resolution and launch a freshly installed copy of the VM every day and have ...". They've profiled that group of people. There are about 1 members of that group. That group is you, and maybe one other person like you.
I use these techniques to catch bad guys trying to log in using your user name and password. If someone on a Mac in California claims to be you, but just a few hours ago I saw you still in Chicago on your Windows 7 VM, I'm going to be awfully suspicious of the dude in California who claims to be you.
I can't say for sure how Google's tracking works, but I know how mine works, and we can be pretty sure that Google's is better than mine. Mine would "recognize" you pretty well.
Basically, you'd be lumped in with all of the other people who use that exact same VM, on the ISP, in the same area, and visit the same sites - basically just you. :) Here's a bit about how it works.
First we have your IP address/24, which puts you in a group of a couple hundred people. We ignore the last octet of the IP because that changes. We also record IP/20.
Next up we have the User Agent, which looks like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2227.1 Safari/537.36
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.4; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2225.0 Safari/537.36
So if you're on Windows 7, that's going to separate you from Windows 8 and Windows 10 users, etc. Note also the very fine-grained Chrome build number. Not just version 41, but version 41.0.2227.1 for one person, someone else is on 41.0.2225.0, etc.
Here's the gold mine mine right here. The Accept header. Check out the most recent person trying to log in to the site I checked:
Accept: image/gif, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-application,
application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml,
application/x-ms-xbap, application/x-shockwave-flash,
application/x-silverlight-2-b2, application/x-silverlight,
application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint,
application/msword, */*
I can distinguish between him and someone with the EXACT same computer image, but who hasn't installed Silverlight. There are about 50 different applications that can show up in the Accept header. The exact mix of applications you have installed on that VM really help distinguish between you and the only other person in your neighborhood, on your ISP, who behaves similarly to you, using a fresh VM and not logging in.
Of course you're talking about being tracked by the company who made your browser, so they see you visit Slashdot twice a day, and whatever other sites you visit. that, combined with everything else above, distinguishes you from pretty much anyone else.
That's not even getting into cookies, Flash cookies, local storage, super cookies, etc.
Paper airplanes are drones because the dihedral is what keeps it aloft and balanced.. The operator just provides directional and power input.
Because the Bebop 2 now includes a GPS module, it is able follow step-by-step instructions given by the pilot, such as "fly 50 feet, turn left, then fly 30 feet". In US military terms, that's partial autonomy.
Full autonomous would include decision-making ability. A fully autonomous system can recognize it is on a collision course with another aircraft, and take appropriate action.
Partial or semi-autonomous is cool, it's fun - and you have to be standing there watching it, controller in hand, or it'll likely crash, or at least violate the law by flying over the two ladies who are jogging. So while cool, it's really not that autonomous since we're still needing to watch it carefully and make all the decisions.
So by your definition a paper airplane and a party balloon are drones?
In my opinion, any useful definition of "drone" needs to distinguish between a paper airplane vs X-47B, Triton, BAMS, etc.
The FAA doesn't use the term drone, so there is no definition from them. The use Unmanned Aerial System and "autonomous". Under the the first draft of the recent UAS regulations, a paper airplane was a UAS and required a license. The draft was slightly improved before it went into effect.
The word "drone" is used for two very different things.
Actual drones fly autonomously, and are normally fixed wing airplanes. Examples include the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, and MQ-9 Reaper.
What this article calls "drones" are RC quadcopters. As the article mentioned, they were flown from by the ground, by radio, just like the RC planes that starting gaining popularity 80 years ago. Quadcopters are fun toys. Because of some fundamental physics, quadcopters get dramatically less efficient as they get larger. The concept works quite well for a toy three inches across. Efficiency drops as you approach the larger popular size, which is 250mm (10 inches) across. Once you get up to about a meter across you're hitting the practical limit. You CAN build one bigger, but it's performance and especially flight time completely sucks compared to a plane or helicopter of similar size. You're never going to put thousands of pounds of military equipment and weapons systems on a quadcopter; it just doesn't make sense.
Can a military use small, unmanned aircraft effectively? Absolutely, and that's been US military doctrine for most of the time since cruise missiles were developed in the 1970s, and especially since the Tomahawk in 1983. Several proposed new aircraft have been cancelled in favor of missiles, which can carry out the same mission at lower cost, in dollars and lives. The venerable B-52 can quickly carry TWENTY AGM-86 cruise missiles to within 1500 miles of the targets, anywhere in the world, and those missiles then autonomously fly the last 1,500 miles to their targets.
There's really little military need for small, low-performance aircraft to fly around in patterns. Generally, you want to get to the target and destroy it quickly. That's what missiles do. Other aircraft can loiter maintaining situational awareness, watching, then call the missile strikes. There's little need for the recon aircraft to also be the one to strike the target.
In some hostile airspace, against moving targets or targets you can't get good satellite views of, you sometimes want to look, then fire a weapon. For that you want fast, stealthy aircraft which carry enough armament to destroy the target in one strike. A large group of slow, non-stealthy toys, which carry no more than a hand grenade, isn't particularly useful.
Last summer our "drone" (quadcopter) group in Dallas set the record for the most flown individually, as opposed to Intel's system in which a computer flew them all as a group. We have a hundred people standing in a field, all flying our toys simultaneously.
I wish the marketers hadn't labeled RC quadcopters "drones" because it creates confusion. An actual drone flies autonomously. Most drones are fixed-wing aircraft, airplanes. That includes the MQ-1B Predator, RQ-7B Shadow, MQ-9 Reaper, etc. What this article calls "drones" are radio controlled quadcopters. RC quadcopters are just like the RC model planes your great-grandfather flew eighty years ago, except quadcopters are less efficient and they can hover.
Most of what you've said is true, but you missed what has made Google not only by far the largest marketing company in history, but one of the world's largest and most successful companies. You've missed what they have that nobody else does, their number one most valuable asset.
What marketing data companies used to do, and most still do, is collect information about leads and sell their lists to each other. Company A would sell their list to Company B. Company B would combine that with some of their own data and sell it to company C. Company C would merge it with some data from D, and sell the combined list to Company A. They all ended up with a lot of the same data, the data going round and round in circles. None of the companies had that much valuable data that wasn't already in the hands of many other companies. A lot of these traditional market data companies only lasted a few years. Some survive, but aren't household names, they aren't major companies like the big manufacturing companies, entertainment companies, etc.
Google did something different. Google realized their data was only really valuable if it was data that other companies didn't have. So they set up AdWords, allowing customers to place ads that make use of the data, without ever letting anyone else actually get the data. By never, ever selling the data they keep ahold of their most valuable asset. That's why Anthem Marketing is worth about $16 million and Google is worth $750 BILLION. Because Google guards their data like Coke guards their secret recipe.
I'm not really a space nerd, so no, I don't look at satellite tracks on 2D maps. I'm a computer nerd, a time nerd, and a few other things, but not a space nerd.
It DOES make sense after you think about it for a minute, or if you're uses to seeing that.
Thank you and all who think like you for trying to help my kid, who is both black and female. It's appreciated.
My kid, a black woman, does not in fact need your condescending "help" to contribute to any open source project. It's just patronizing and insulting for you to act like she can't do whatever she decides to do, on your own merit with her own skills - to say that she needs your help.
What she needs from you guys is for you to instead spend that time proofreading and unit testing your own shit, so she doesn't have to spend her time fixing your mistakes. The thing is, she's smarter than you guys. She's even smarter than Bruce, and Bruce is a pretty smart guy.
Sounds like you live in the bay area? 99.99% of the world isn't San Francisco. Open source projects especially are world-wide endeavors, and by far most people world wide are not "cis-male, white and straight, the majority of that number are all three at once".
Heck, even in your little bay area garden, most people aren't male and straight, if you haven't noticed.
> If you already happen to have a demographically-representative set of people working with you, you don't have to use it. However, until that day arrives, programs like Outreachy can help you to rectify that situation.
I don't know, or care, how many people I work with call themselves "gender-free", how many enjoy sex with women, or any of that. All of that is SO completely irrelevant to work. You and they seriously think that when I'm reviewing code submissions, to make sure they work correctly and have appropriate security, I should make sure to ask who the coder sleeps with? It's okay to introduce a security problem, if the coder has sex with multiple people over the age of 70, I guess? Your thinking is just bizarre.
> You don't have to care, and are in fact being encouraged to not care.
What part of "requirements: you must be transgender" do you not understand?
The Democrat raises some good questions in that letter.
I did notice some of the questions are things you've already answered in this thread, for example you've said it was official trip where they all went together, with the government paying for it.
> I believe that the whole point of this is to get more of these individuals who can do the work
Perhaps so. I can't guess how many people involved actually thought that they are missing out on a bunch of trannies who for some reason couldn't submit code without being specifically invited. I don't know how many of the people of involved were raised on virtue signaling.
What I DO know is that the actual results they are getting is that people who can and DO work full time on the project are leaving, because they want it to be about the code, not about people who wish they didn't have a penis.
> at a function paid for by the government including travel
> it's an official function that they went to as a group, so it stands to reason that they're there in official capacity and all travel etc is reimbursed. It's the way the gov functions. No one goes to a gov work function without travel orders
Now what you've been saying makes sense to me.
You think the Conservative Political Action Conference is "an official function" that is "paid for by the government". You think the commissioners "all went there as a group", as a "government work function" based on "travel orders".
Based on those assumptions, a lot of what you said would make sense.
I'm afraid you're mistaken, though, none of those are factually true. CPAC is a private event hosted by American Conservative Union, paid for by donors, not "an official function paid for by the government". They didn't all go there as a group, two conservative commissioners attended.
These are the official requirements for the program he objects to, copy/pasted from their web page:
--
You must meet one of the following criteria:
You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree).
You live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or permanent resident living aboard, AND you are a person of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander
--
They have decided to explicitly NOT treat people the same. You MUST be transgender or something in order to participate in the program and get the benefits.
Most of the people I work with in open source, I don't know anything about their sexuality and I don't care. Not one bit. I care about the code - does it work, and has it been tested to be be sure that it works. Requiring me t inquire into someone's sexual preferences in order to determine how to process their code submissions would turn me off greatly as well.
Well good, we're making progress then. You've decided you agree with me, the Special Counsel, and the Attorney General that the Commissioner's duties don't stop when he leaves office, he was on duty. I'm not sure where you got "travel provided by the FCC", but that doesn't matter at this point. The point to decide now is that unlike an hourly employee who is done working when they leave the premises, as a principal his duties to the taxpayer continue no matter where he goes, right?