If that happens, leave the item in the store (with proof if you can) and do a chargeback and let the CC company negotiate with the business as to whether they are being reasonable. If you do too many of *those*, then you'd have a problem. The CC companies already do act as a check against businesses trying to screw you and not following their own policies, I don't expect that to change as it's not in their interest.
I'm a bit surprised they'd do that, honestly. I think the customer expectation is that you need the receipt, but it's also fairly common for stores to accept returns by crediting the credit card that was used for the purchase (after having looked up the purchase from the card number). I've never heard of a cash return without the receipt (and sometimes the receipt has to indicate the purchase was in cash, if it were a CC they'd refund that instead).
If a store refused no-receipt returns for cash I think nobody would notice except scammers.
That would be a better solution, there's no question, but surely you agree that'd take time especially given all the examples of Comcast et al suing to block municipal fiber? In the meantime why not have common-sense rules preventing the worst of the monopolistic excesses?
Look, I'm not a parent, but I have been a kid. Both "doing well in school" and "being nice to people" aren't necessarily things you want tied to rewards - they might just learn that. My parents were always very clear with me that while they expected me to do well in school, there wouldn't be any rewards for it. I knew kids who got $20 for each report card A or something and even as a kid that seemed like a bad attitude. As a side benefit, Tiny Tim won't think of his $FADITEM as transactionally due to him, he'll be more grateful when/if it comes.
Oh man, you put it much better than I could. And then there's the not-even-ethically-ambiguous situations. We went to an extremely elderly woman in a hospital bed at home once and asked the family, everyone around, whether the patient had a DNR and nobody knew what I was talking about and certainly didn't produce it. ALS showed up and said "does this patient have a DNR" and the family was like "oh, here you go" - meanwhile we'd been coding her for 5 minutes! We stopped and medics pronounced and we left, but we weren't doing anybody any good in the meantime.
When resuscitation is required, there are literally seconds to act. Doing CPR sucks, it rarely works, and even if you "get a pulse back" the odds of them having any decent quality of life or even leaving the hospital is small. But the only thing worse than doing it is not doing it, and the only thing worse than doing it right away is doing it too late. If we delay CPR hunting for a DNR, we know that each second is making it less and less likely it'll work. Unless someone is literally blocking our way presenting some official form, we are we are more likely to begin CPR. We can't go on an easter egg hunt, we don't have the time or manpower to spare. Honestly if the patient is alone I'm not looking further than their chest/shirt (you can pin it to your clothing) or bedside table, unless it's posted prominently on the front door or similar. If family is around I'll ask them and if they don't have it immediately, it's CPR time. I just can't justify reducing someone's chances with each second of hunting around - what if they *do* want to be resuscitated and I've wasted what little chance they had?
Honestly the "tattoo on the chest" being questionable surprises me. It's pretty much the simplest case I can imagine for a valid DNR. We've been taught that a valid DNR can be written on a napkin or - indeed - a tattoo, and a chest tattoo makes it impossible to miss when about to perform CPR. And its placement on the chest makes intention to signal unambiguous. I'd imagine I'd honor it without question, unless I have *any* reason to suspect that wasn't your current desire (e.g. family member). You can tattoo an "X" over your tattoo if your wishes change and you don't want to get it removed.
I find the presumption of profit motive insulting. DNRs are largely an emergency medical concern, for the most part hospitals are for people in a position to make their wishes known more clearly. There's no profit for us - we're volunteers, we don't get paid, and we don't bill anybody. The residents of the town donate money for us to buy equipment. We're not in the business of resuscitating anybody who doesn't want it (did I mention it's miserable?), but just think about how you'd convince someone you've never met of your intentions within 15 seconds of seeing you when they're not looking around for paper - oh, and you're unconscious. It's really hard, and we always will err on the side of life since the alternative is not what we're here for.
The easiest thing to do is set it up so that people around you don't call 911 if you end up requiring resuscitation. If you're to a point, hospice can help with end-of-life palliative (pain reduction, etc) care that's not lifesaving. When my grandfather died, he was at home in bed and we were all around, and when the time came nobody called 911 because there was no emergency. He had a DNR, but it was never used.
Oh, and don't get a "DNR" tattoo because you lost a bet - I don't know the joke, and I might just honor it. (And it'd probably stand up in court, too.)
They wouldn't be the same bandwidth though, which is literally in the summary:
...replace its cable lines -- great at downloads, not so great at uploads, no opportunity to scale to the capacity of fiber thanks to the laws of physics...
Fiber is typically symmetric. Even FiOS, which is fairly lousy as an ISP in many respects, is symmetric on all plans. My folks have their "gigabit" plan - it's only 940Mbps actually, but it is symmetric and does hit that speed even in real-world use. That's one of the nice things about fiber, actually - you have the bandwidth, might as well do something with it
This attitude bothers me. As a 14 year old I was pretty sure where I was making good and bad decisions, when I could do something properly vs when I didn't have enough information or experience, etc. But adults kept telling me I wasn't old enough, I lacked maturity, and so on.
So a few years later I went to college. And now I wasn't some high school kid, but I still wasn't an adult. Adults told me I lacked maturity, I wasn't old enough, my brain was still developing, etc.
Then I graduated college and I learned the secret: there's no difference and adulthood as a concept is all a scam. The *person* is what matters. Every kid attaches a certain amount of weight to things "adults" say because that title carries weight. But I learned: some adults are smart, and some are basically that dumb kid in high school you got sick of listening to. Just like in high school, some kids were smart, and some were basically dumb.
My personal theory is people are basically who they're going to be by age 15-16, and don't change much from that point on. Society changes around them.
Why do people assume you - to use your words, "know the music"? You're presumed to because... why? Something you did? Something you've demonstrated? No, when you walk into a room, people observe that you've over this arbitrary age threshold and figure you're basically mature. Sure, you could dispel them of that presumption, but some mature teenager has to start from the presumption that they're immature. Some might call this "privilege" (not I, but it's the same concept).
Ultimately this wouldn't matter much except by devaluing teenagers, we overvalue adults and do dumb things because we overestimate the average person. If we looked at the people around us and though of our high-school classmates I think we'd have a much more realistic outlook. "Immature behavior" is really just standard human weakness by another name, but easier to dismiss and harder to address since you assume people just grow out of it, when really they just lose the excuse.
And for the record, I've got a full-time job (going on 5 years and 2 promotions), an apartment, a 401(k), stocks and other assets, savings, life insurance, I do my taxes, etc. I'm 27 and I haven't changed a bit since 16 - people just give me more credit. To be clear I don't say I'm "wise" - I don't have that kind of experience - but I'm as mature as I'm ever going to be.
If you *steal* the secret it's a crime, but if you reverse-engineer it correctly they have no recourse. That's the whole point of patents, actually - if you want to keep people from using your invention, you have to publish it and you get a time-limited exclusive right to the idea. That's the cherry to get people to release their invention for everyone's (eventual) benefit. If you don't want anybody else to have it ever - well you just have to keep it secret and hope nobody figures it out, because if they do you're out of luck.
To be honest it's a big inconvenience wherever the president goes. Obama's 2-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard always coincided with my yearly week on Cape Cod and the outer ring put a big wall through that airspace as well. The difference IMO is that Obama mostly was at the WH (or Camp David, both of which have permanent - and charted - flight-pain zones) and his yearly vacation, with the occasional excursions typical of any president - whereas it's a rare weekend Trump isn't at one or the other golf course. His presence will directly put several small businesses out of business - flight schools, FBOs, and maintenance shops - at airports in Florida, specifically KLNA, which has had multiple closures and businesses moving away since it's within the 10NM no-fly zone where basically nothing but air ambulance and military flights are permitted even with a flight plan.
I don't think it's even on Trump's radar (so to speak) though. While they were both still candidates, the AOPA sent them questionnaires about their view of general aviation - HRC answered with the standard "economic engine, best in the world, keep it going safely, fund the FAA" thing some staffer prepared, but Trump didn't even bother to respond.
Yeah the TFR is pretty painful. I'm a fixed-wing pilot based out of one of the airports in the outer ring. I'm working on my instrument rating, so I'd be on a flight plan, but since flight training is a prohibited activity we have two options - 1) fly to a nearby airport outside the ring on a visual flight plan (with me as pilot-in-command so it's not technically flight training yet) then start our instrument flight plan (since I can't be PIC under instrument rules until I'm rated, and I can't not be PIC since that'd be flight training), do our thing, come back, land, and go back visually. 2) Do the whole flight as instrument rules, under my instructor's authority, and pretend I'm just some guy - not a student - until we leave the outer ring, at which point he'll start training me
Neither is very good. From the rules the first is better, though it's not clear to me it'll actually make much difference. The FAA's busted an instructor who was present in the plane - in the back seat sleeping - while his fully-rated buddy was up front flying them back from dinner and broke a rule. The FAA seems to believe that any time an instructor's in the airplane he is - or should be - providing instruction. If everything's fine it's not an issue, but if there's a problem don't see how (1) keeps the instructor safe... though if the FAA's decided there's a problem it hardly matters what the text of the rules say, they have broad statutory privilege to interpret their own rules.
The school contacted the Secret Service, and to their credit they basically said "yeah we don't care what you do as long as you're not maneuvering near by and you're talking to ATC and have a transponder code". But the FAA has their blanket restrictions and you have to comply.
They've been reasonably accommodating... the Hudson River VFR corridor has been exempted from the TFR, which is nice (though it makes it even more dangerous than usual) and there's several cutouts for airports near the edge, and a special corridor for Morristown flights. It's much worse down in Florida at Mar-a-Lago because of the heavy flight training operations down there.
I'm no fan of Trump, but in fairness he - and any president - gets little say over their protection. Though I will say it would be nice if he stayed in either of the two mansions we're paying for for him a little more frequently.
Due to President Trump spending (yet another) weekend at his golf course in Bedminster NJ, there was a 30NM temporary flight restriction from 0-18,000FT: here from Friday night through ~5PM Sunday. Staten Island is wholly included.
The drone pilot should have gotten a flight briefing. The standard restriction for VIP TFRs, which this one shares, is:
C. The following operations are not authorized within this TFR: flight training, practice instrument approaches, aerobatic flight, glider operations, seaplane operations, parachute operations, ultralight, hang gliding, balloon operations, agriculture/crop dusting, animal population control flight operations, banner towing operations, sightseeing operations, maintenance test flights, model aircraft operations, model rocketry, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and utility and pipeline survey operations.
My emphasis. That's why the Blackhawk was around, by the way - obviously it's allowed in the flight restriction in support of the Secret Service. All non-military aircraft have to be outside the 10NM inner ring, on a flight plan talking to ATC and with a transponder code uniquely identifying them on radar, and even then there's a ton of restrictions over permissible activites - basically you can leave directly, or enter and land directly, or you can maybe get permission to fly though.
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA;
Basically that means if there's a helicopter route or altitude restriction published you should use it (usually they follow highways or rivers) but otherwise you can fly low.
The issue is that YouTube (GOOGLE) directs you to a specific CDN based entirely on the location of the name server you are using rather than your actual location. This means that even if your ISP has a nice YouTube (GOOGLE) CDN that can deliver terabits of YouTube video per second, it wont use it if your name server is one of the public ones located on another leg of the internet (such as GOOGLES public name servers.
Not true. https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#cdn. Most site's nameservers that serve geo-sensitive results (including Youtube's) respect the edns-client-subnet information that most public DNS resolvers send, including Google's Public DNS. That means that regardless of where the public nameserver is located, it'll fetch the appropriate results from the authority as if it was on your network.
If other sites work at full speed, it's possible that your ISP's peering with Google is the bottleneck, not the last mile. It would be tricky to get much visibility into that though.
I agree because people are dumb, but it's ironic because the original autopilots, the ones in planes, are nowhere near this sophisticated despite recent improvements. It's only relatively recently that they're smart enough to avoid stalling the plane by giving up trying to maintain altitude, or will refuse to fly into a mountain. Lane-keeping is actually a much harder challenge.
Simple autopilots take a few inputs: - Aircraft roll from the gyroscope, or an internal gyroscope - Heading and selected heading - Navigation error - Altitude from an altimeter, or more commonly an outside-air-pressure input with their own altimeter inside
They have usually 2 outputs: servos on the control yoke to control roll, and a servo on the trim tab to control pitch. A bigger plane will have a yaw control on the rudder (to make turns more comfortable), and an even bigger plane will have auto-throttles. Without auto-throttle you have to manually adjust the power setting for the climb/descent you're commanding - and yes sometimes people forget and die.
They basically live their lives trying to make some of their inputs match other inputs, or match some selected value, with no concepts beyond that. One common autopilot in small planes (KAP140) can be put in roll, heading, or 'nav' mode in the roll axis, and vertical-speed or altitude-hold mode in the pitch axis. Roll mode just means "wings level" and drives towards level if it's not. Heading compares the current heading to the selected heading (via the "heading bug") and tries to line them up, turning until they are. Nav mode takes an input from the "CDI" (position error from desired course) display and tries to make that 0 by turning opposite the error direction. The pitch-axis modes are pretty obvious. You can "arm" a particular mode to "capture" it when it the error gets close enough to 0, for instance flying a particular heading until on the desired course, then maintaining that course - or perhaps holding a particular vertical speed until reaching the desired altitude, then leveling off there. There's no inputs for "don't hit other airplanes" or "don't hit the ground" or "don't stall by trying to climb without enough power" - they just try to keep the analog error signal at 0 and correct if it's not.
So "autopilot" is pretty apt for Tesla's thing, which you can tell to hold speed and lane and set it off. What people get wrong is they figure that pilots are sipping mimosas or something for most of the flight since the autopilot is doing everything - actually you assume the autopilot's going to try to kill you and are constantly monitoring its performance, ready to take over at any second, and you get extensive training in this. The autopilot just frees up some mental space to do all the *other* work you need to do to fly the plane - briefing departure and approach procedures, communicating with ATC, watching out for other airplanes, evaluating performance, monitoring weather, etc etc.
Despite specific training in the use of the autopilot for workload management, but also to keep a close eye on it, there's *still* a problem with pilots losing their flying skills due to (some argue) overuse, and being unable to assess a problem and hand-fly the airplane correctly after an A/P disconnect. Sound familiar? If professionals with extensive, specific training and procedures can't get this automation stuff right, what hope does the average driver have?
Using unsigned for an extra bit is dumb. Unsigned values should only be used for data, not numbers, or if that extra bit is really really important and you can prove it If you want to prove an invariant that the thing is always non-negative, that's what asserts are for. If you think your data type might ever have more than a million of something, automatically reach for 64-bit values. Don't play games about the difference between 2 and 4 billion.
Using signed values for non-negative numbers have the nice property that overflows are immediately recognizable and generally cause crashes or "entry not found" rather than corruption. For loop counters they prevent infinite loops. And memory (even on phones) is too cheap to worry about the extra 32 bits. Besides how sure are you that you're not wasting those 32 bits anyway inside the allocator's fixed-size buckets or packing issues with your struct? Those yield bigger gains than using a smaller data type.
The whole plan is pretty unfortunate, but if a non-profit became the regulator that would be extremely alarming. I haven't read the plan but AFAIK most of these proposals - and implementations in other countries - leave the government proper with the regulatory aspects and turn over only the ATC system itself to the private organization.
The FAA does about the best job in the world at air traffic control. IAAPilot (private, of small planes for fun and personal travel) and I'm sympathetic to basically being a special interest group. However the US has the strongest general aviation (GA) sector of any country in the world, and part of that is due to the government treating everyone equally. The reason the big airlines like privatization is because it would let them effectively design routes and airspace that save them money, at the expense of smaller operators - anything from crop-dusters to news helicopters to medivac flights to guys like me.
There's a safety aspect as well, though it's a bit technical. Countries with privatized ATC pay for it with "user fees" - which to be clear the US already has, and it's a fuel tax, but other countries send you a bill for any services you use. Services are things like talking to an airport control tower or regional area controller, instrument flight clearances or instrument approaches, etc. Our (GA's) interaction with the ATC system is a small fraction of their workload, but it pays disproportionate mutual benefits because airlines are pretty much all flying the same routes but we all have to get along.
Let me explain: most GA flying doesn't require talking to anybody at all, even most flights near busy urban centers, but it's very beneficial to do so. There's a service called "flight following" where you don't need a flight plan but you show up no the controller's screen and they know how to reach you if they'd like you to turn, climb, or descend to avoid another airplane - especially a passenger jet on a fixed routing, which would otherwise have to be turned to avoid you. In exchange they help you find other airplanes, so you can keep away from them visually (as is your responsibility in visual conditions), and if you have an emergency they already know exactly where you are. It's super useful and dramatically improves safety and efficiency for everyone. But it's not remotely required, so if it costs money most pilots would simply ignore it - and now they have to turn jets out of the way of some guy bumbling around (as is his right) in a Cessna on a nice day.
Furthermore the US is about the only country where non-career pilots can practically fly by reference to instruments (in the clouds). Having an instrument rating and an instrument-certified small airplane lets you fly in worse weather, but the biggest benefit is that it makes your flights in marginal weather much, much safer. Dangerous "scud-running" with low-to-the-ground clouds and low visibility might be possible, and legal to do visually, but it's far safer to do the flight on instruments instead. A buddy was doing some flying in Finland with an instructor, and the weather started to get worse, so he suggested simply getting an instrument clearance and doing an instrument approach to land - but it would have cost about 200 euros so the instructor wouldn't do it unless he paid.
tl;dr ATC services should not be pay-per-usage as it degrades safety for everyone. Existing mechanisms like fuel taxes are sufficient to cover the cost and encourage all pilots to eagerly use the services, which keeps everyone safer.
Sorry, what's wrong with the regulator operating the infrastructure? The regulators *and* the infrastructure serve the public interest here. The FAA has plenty of faults, but they're not generally of the power-hungry variety.
One of the things the FAA is doing is coordinating the development of unleaded 100-octane avgas. There's been a number of promising developments and some are already on the market. Once the FAA finishes its tests and (as expected) is able to give blanket approval to use the new fuels in every plane where 100LL is currently certified, everyone'll switch over pretty quickly.
That's not remotely the case. There are many circumstances in which someone can be compelled to testify - in fact, the only time you *can't* be compelled to testify is if it's against yourself. The lawsuit is against Uber. Uber can be compelled to produce documents, and so can the people around them if a court can be convinced. Levandowski isn't Uber. And even if it is against yourself, you can absolutely be compelled to hand over documents and other evidence, even if it proves your guilt.
Even in a criminal trial, you can be compelled to testify against yourself - you just have to be granted immunity by the grand jury in exchange. This is common in e.g. drug trials, they'll arrest the user and charge him with a felony, then offer him immunity in exchange for (compelled) testimony against the dealer. You have to be careful though, because if you compel testimony about a murder and the guy says "yes I know who killed him, it was me" - you're SOL.
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If that happens, leave the item in the store (with proof if you can) and do a chargeback and let the CC company negotiate with the business as to whether they are being reasonable. If you do too many of *those*, then you'd have a problem. The CC companies already do act as a check against businesses trying to screw you and not following their own policies, I don't expect that to change as it's not in their interest.
I'm a bit surprised they'd do that, honestly. I think the customer expectation is that you need the receipt, but it's also fairly common for stores to accept returns by crediting the credit card that was used for the purchase (after having looked up the purchase from the card number). I've never heard of a cash return without the receipt (and sometimes the receipt has to indicate the purchase was in cash, if it were a CC they'd refund that instead).
If a store refused no-receipt returns for cash I think nobody would notice except scammers.
Why?
That would be a better solution, there's no question, but surely you agree that'd take time especially given all the examples of Comcast et al suing to block municipal fiber? In the meantime why not have common-sense rules preventing the worst of the monopolistic excesses?
Look, I'm not a parent, but I have been a kid. Both "doing well in school" and "being nice to people" aren't necessarily things you want tied to rewards - they might just learn that. My parents were always very clear with me that while they expected me to do well in school, there wouldn't be any rewards for it. I knew kids who got $20 for each report card A or something and even as a kid that seemed like a bad attitude. As a side benefit, Tiny Tim won't think of his $FADITEM as transactionally due to him, he'll be more grateful when/if it comes.
(BLS here, not ALS)
Oh man, you put it much better than I could. And then there's the not-even-ethically-ambiguous situations. We went to an extremely elderly woman in a hospital bed at home once and asked the family, everyone around, whether the patient had a DNR and nobody knew what I was talking about and certainly didn't produce it. ALS showed up and said "does this patient have a DNR" and the family was like "oh, here you go" - meanwhile we'd been coding her for 5 minutes! We stopped and medics pronounced and we left, but we weren't doing anybody any good in the meantime.
When resuscitation is required, there are literally seconds to act. Doing CPR sucks, it rarely works, and even if you "get a pulse back" the odds of them having any decent quality of life or even leaving the hospital is small. But the only thing worse than doing it is not doing it, and the only thing worse than doing it right away is doing it too late. If we delay CPR hunting for a DNR, we know that each second is making it less and less likely it'll work. Unless someone is literally blocking our way presenting some official form, we are we are more likely to begin CPR. We can't go on an easter egg hunt, we don't have the time or manpower to spare. Honestly if the patient is alone I'm not looking further than their chest/shirt (you can pin it to your clothing) or bedside table, unless it's posted prominently on the front door or similar. If family is around I'll ask them and if they don't have it immediately, it's CPR time. I just can't justify reducing someone's chances with each second of hunting around - what if they *do* want to be resuscitated and I've wasted what little chance they had?
Honestly the "tattoo on the chest" being questionable surprises me. It's pretty much the simplest case I can imagine for a valid DNR. We've been taught that a valid DNR can be written on a napkin or - indeed - a tattoo, and a chest tattoo makes it impossible to miss when about to perform CPR. And its placement on the chest makes intention to signal unambiguous. I'd imagine I'd honor it without question, unless I have *any* reason to suspect that wasn't your current desire (e.g. family member). You can tattoo an "X" over your tattoo if your wishes change and you don't want to get it removed.
I find the presumption of profit motive insulting. DNRs are largely an emergency medical concern, for the most part hospitals are for people in a position to make their wishes known more clearly. There's no profit for us - we're volunteers, we don't get paid, and we don't bill anybody. The residents of the town donate money for us to buy equipment. We're not in the business of resuscitating anybody who doesn't want it (did I mention it's miserable?), but just think about how you'd convince someone you've never met of your intentions within 15 seconds of seeing you when they're not looking around for paper - oh, and you're unconscious. It's really hard, and we always will err on the side of life since the alternative is not what we're here for.
The easiest thing to do is set it up so that people around you don't call 911 if you end up requiring resuscitation. If you're to a point, hospice can help with end-of-life palliative (pain reduction, etc) care that's not lifesaving. When my grandfather died, he was at home in bed and we were all around, and when the time came nobody called 911 because there was no emergency. He had a DNR, but it was never used.
Oh, and don't get a "DNR" tattoo because you lost a bet - I don't know the joke, and I might just honor it. (And it'd probably stand up in court, too.)
They wouldn't be the same bandwidth though, which is literally in the summary:
...replace its cable lines -- great at downloads, not so great at uploads, no opportunity to scale to the capacity of fiber thanks to the laws of physics...
Fiber is typically symmetric. Even FiOS, which is fairly lousy as an ISP in many respects, is symmetric on all plans. My folks have their "gigabit" plan - it's only 940Mbps actually, but it is symmetric and does hit that speed even in real-world use. That's one of the nice things about fiber, actually - you have the bandwidth, might as well do something with it
This attitude bothers me. As a 14 year old I was pretty sure where I was making good and bad decisions, when I could do something properly vs when I didn't have enough information or experience, etc. But adults kept telling me I wasn't old enough, I lacked maturity, and so on.
So a few years later I went to college. And now I wasn't some high school kid, but I still wasn't an adult. Adults told me I lacked maturity, I wasn't old enough, my brain was still developing, etc.
Then I graduated college and I learned the secret: there's no difference and adulthood as a concept is all a scam. The *person* is what matters. Every kid attaches a certain amount of weight to things "adults" say because that title carries weight. But I learned: some adults are smart, and some are basically that dumb kid in high school you got sick of listening to. Just like in high school, some kids were smart, and some were basically dumb.
My personal theory is people are basically who they're going to be by age 15-16, and don't change much from that point on. Society changes around them.
Why do people assume you - to use your words, "know the music"? You're presumed to because... why? Something you did? Something you've demonstrated? No, when you walk into a room, people observe that you've over this arbitrary age threshold and figure you're basically mature. Sure, you could dispel them of that presumption, but some mature teenager has to start from the presumption that they're immature. Some might call this "privilege" (not I, but it's the same concept).
Ultimately this wouldn't matter much except by devaluing teenagers, we overvalue adults and do dumb things because we overestimate the average person. If we looked at the people around us and though of our high-school classmates I think we'd have a much more realistic outlook. "Immature behavior" is really just standard human weakness by another name, but easier to dismiss and harder to address since you assume people just grow out of it, when really they just lose the excuse.
And for the record, I've got a full-time job (going on 5 years and 2 promotions), an apartment, a 401(k), stocks and other assets, savings, life insurance, I do my taxes, etc. I'm 27 and I haven't changed a bit since 16 - people just give me more credit. To be clear I don't say I'm "wise" - I don't have that kind of experience - but I'm as mature as I'm ever going to be.
If you *steal* the secret it's a crime, but if you reverse-engineer it correctly they have no recourse. That's the whole point of patents, actually - if you want to keep people from using your invention, you have to publish it and you get a time-limited exclusive right to the idea. That's the cherry to get people to release their invention for everyone's (eventual) benefit. If you don't want anybody else to have it ever - well you just have to keep it secret and hope nobody figures it out, because if they do you're out of luck.
To be honest it's a big inconvenience wherever the president goes. Obama's 2-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard always coincided with my yearly week on Cape Cod and the outer ring put a big wall through that airspace as well. The difference IMO is that Obama mostly was at the WH (or Camp David, both of which have permanent - and charted - flight-pain zones) and his yearly vacation, with the occasional excursions typical of any president - whereas it's a rare weekend Trump isn't at one or the other golf course. His presence will directly put several small businesses out of business - flight schools, FBOs, and maintenance shops - at airports in Florida, specifically KLNA, which has had multiple closures and businesses moving away since it's within the 10NM no-fly zone where basically nothing but air ambulance and military flights are permitted even with a flight plan.
I don't think it's even on Trump's radar (so to speak) though. While they were both still candidates, the AOPA sent them questionnaires about their view of general aviation - HRC answered with the standard "economic engine, best in the world, keep it going safely, fund the FAA" thing some staffer prepared, but Trump didn't even bother to respond.
Oh. That would be this TFR (7/8422) instead, from 3:30pm Thursday through 5:30PM Friday. The other was 7/8426.
(There's been a lot of TFRs.)
Yeah the TFR is pretty painful. I'm a fixed-wing pilot based out of one of the airports in the outer ring. I'm working on my instrument rating, so I'd be on a flight plan, but since flight training is a prohibited activity we have two options -
1) fly to a nearby airport outside the ring on a visual flight plan (with me as pilot-in-command so it's not technically flight training yet) then start our instrument flight plan (since I can't be PIC under instrument rules until I'm rated, and I can't not be PIC since that'd be flight training), do our thing, come back, land, and go back visually.
2) Do the whole flight as instrument rules, under my instructor's authority, and pretend I'm just some guy - not a student - until we leave the outer ring, at which point he'll start training me
Neither is very good. From the rules the first is better, though it's not clear to me it'll actually make much difference. The FAA's busted an instructor who was present in the plane - in the back seat sleeping - while his fully-rated buddy was up front flying them back from dinner and broke a rule. The FAA seems to believe that any time an instructor's in the airplane he is - or should be - providing instruction. If everything's fine it's not an issue, but if there's a problem don't see how (1) keeps the instructor safe... though if the FAA's decided there's a problem it hardly matters what the text of the rules say, they have broad statutory privilege to interpret their own rules.
The school contacted the Secret Service, and to their credit they basically said "yeah we don't care what you do as long as you're not maneuvering near by and you're talking to ATC and have a transponder code". But the FAA has their blanket restrictions and you have to comply.
They've been reasonably accommodating... the Hudson River VFR corridor has been exempted from the TFR, which is nice (though it makes it even more dangerous than usual) and there's several cutouts for airports near the edge, and a special corridor for Morristown flights. It's much worse down in Florida at Mar-a-Lago because of the heavy flight training operations down there.
I'm no fan of Trump, but in fairness he - and any president - gets little say over their protection. Though I will say it would be nice if he stayed in either of the two mansions we're paying for for him a little more frequently.
The Blackhawk was around because the President is spending the weekend ~20 miles away.
Due to President Trump spending (yet another) weekend at his golf course in Bedminster NJ, there was a 30NM temporary flight restriction from 0-18,000FT: here from Friday night through ~5PM Sunday. Staten Island is wholly included.
The drone pilot should have gotten a flight briefing. The standard restriction for VIP TFRs, which this one shares, is:
C. The following operations are not authorized within this TFR: flight training, practice instrument approaches, aerobatic flight, glider operations, seaplane operations, parachute operations, ultralight, hang gliding, balloon operations, agriculture/crop dusting, animal population control flight operations, banner towing operations, sightseeing operations, maintenance test flights, model aircraft operations, model rocketry, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and utility and pipeline survey operations.
My emphasis. That's why the Blackhawk was around, by the way - obviously it's allowed in the flight restriction in support of the Secret Service. All non-military aircraft have to be outside the 10NM inner ring, on a flight plan talking to ATC and with a transponder code uniquely identifying them on radar, and even then there's a ton of restrictions over permissible activites - basically you can leave directly, or enter and land directly, or you can maybe get permission to fly though.
Wow you didn't even read what you linked:
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA;
Basically that means if there's a helicopter route or altitude restriction published you should use it (usually they follow highways or rivers) but otherwise you can fly low.
Should it?
The issue is that YouTube (GOOGLE) directs you to a specific CDN based entirely on the location of the name server you are using rather than your actual location. This means that even if your ISP has a nice YouTube (GOOGLE) CDN that can deliver terabits of YouTube video per second, it wont use it if your name server is one of the public ones located on another leg of the internet (such as GOOGLES public name servers.
Not true. https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#cdn. Most site's nameservers that serve geo-sensitive results (including Youtube's) respect the edns-client-subnet information that most public DNS resolvers send, including Google's Public DNS. That means that regardless of where the public nameserver is located, it'll fetch the appropriate results from the authority as if it was on your network.
If other sites work at full speed, it's possible that your ISP's peering with Google is the bottleneck, not the last mile. It would be tricky to get much visibility into that though.
I agree because people are dumb, but it's ironic because the original autopilots, the ones in planes, are nowhere near this sophisticated despite recent improvements. It's only relatively recently that they're smart enough to avoid stalling the plane by giving up trying to maintain altitude, or will refuse to fly into a mountain. Lane-keeping is actually a much harder challenge.
Simple autopilots take a few inputs:
- Aircraft roll from the gyroscope, or an internal gyroscope
- Heading and selected heading
- Navigation error
- Altitude from an altimeter, or more commonly an outside-air-pressure input with their own altimeter inside
They have usually 2 outputs: servos on the control yoke to control roll, and a servo on the trim tab to control pitch. A bigger plane will have a yaw control on the rudder (to make turns more comfortable), and an even bigger plane will have auto-throttles. Without auto-throttle you have to manually adjust the power setting for the climb/descent you're commanding - and yes sometimes people forget and die.
They basically live their lives trying to make some of their inputs match other inputs, or match some selected value, with no concepts beyond that. One common autopilot in small planes (KAP140) can be put in roll, heading, or 'nav' mode in the roll axis, and vertical-speed or altitude-hold mode in the pitch axis. Roll mode just means "wings level" and drives towards level if it's not. Heading compares the current heading to the selected heading (via the "heading bug") and tries to line them up, turning until they are. Nav mode takes an input from the "CDI" (position error from desired course) display and tries to make that 0 by turning opposite the error direction. The pitch-axis modes are pretty obvious. You can "arm" a particular mode to "capture" it when it the error gets close enough to 0, for instance flying a particular heading until on the desired course, then maintaining that course - or perhaps holding a particular vertical speed until reaching the desired altitude, then leveling off there. There's no inputs for "don't hit other airplanes" or "don't hit the ground" or "don't stall by trying to climb without enough power" - they just try to keep the analog error signal at 0 and correct if it's not.
So "autopilot" is pretty apt for Tesla's thing, which you can tell to hold speed and lane and set it off. What people get wrong is they figure that pilots are sipping mimosas or something for most of the flight since the autopilot is doing everything - actually you assume the autopilot's going to try to kill you and are constantly monitoring its performance, ready to take over at any second, and you get extensive training in this. The autopilot just frees up some mental space to do all the *other* work you need to do to fly the plane - briefing departure and approach procedures, communicating with ATC, watching out for other airplanes, evaluating performance, monitoring weather, etc etc.
Despite specific training in the use of the autopilot for workload management, but also to keep a close eye on it, there's *still* a problem with pilots losing their flying skills due to (some argue) overuse, and being unable to assess a problem and hand-fly the airplane correctly after an A/P disconnect. Sound familiar? If professionals with extensive, specific training and procedures can't get this automation stuff right, what hope does the average driver have?
Using unsigned for an extra bit is dumb. Unsigned values should only be used for data, not numbers, or if that extra bit is really really important and you can prove it If you want to prove an invariant that the thing is always non-negative, that's what asserts are for. If you think your data type might ever have more than a million of something, automatically reach for 64-bit values. Don't play games about the difference between 2 and 4 billion.
Using signed values for non-negative numbers have the nice property that overflows are immediately recognizable and generally cause crashes or "entry not found" rather than corruption. For loop counters they prevent infinite loops. And memory (even on phones) is too cheap to worry about the extra 32 bits. Besides how sure are you that you're not wasting those 32 bits anyway inside the allocator's fixed-size buckets or packing issues with your struct? Those yield bigger gains than using a smaller data type.
I lol'd.
Ah got it - I misinterpreted your comment.
The whole plan is pretty unfortunate, but if a non-profit became the regulator that would be extremely alarming. I haven't read the plan but AFAIK most of these proposals - and implementations in other countries - leave the government proper with the regulatory aspects and turn over only the ATC system itself to the private organization.
The FAA does about the best job in the world at air traffic control. IAAPilot (private, of small planes for fun and personal travel) and I'm sympathetic to basically being a special interest group. However the US has the strongest general aviation (GA) sector of any country in the world, and part of that is due to the government treating everyone equally. The reason the big airlines like privatization is because it would let them effectively design routes and airspace that save them money, at the expense of smaller operators - anything from crop-dusters to news helicopters to medivac flights to guys like me.
There's a safety aspect as well, though it's a bit technical. Countries with privatized ATC pay for it with "user fees" - which to be clear the US already has, and it's a fuel tax, but other countries send you a bill for any services you use. Services are things like talking to an airport control tower or regional area controller, instrument flight clearances or instrument approaches, etc. Our (GA's) interaction with the ATC system is a small fraction of their workload, but it pays disproportionate mutual benefits because airlines are pretty much all flying the same routes but we all have to get along.
Let me explain: most GA flying doesn't require talking to anybody at all, even most flights near busy urban centers, but it's very beneficial to do so. There's a service called "flight following" where you don't need a flight plan but you show up no the controller's screen and they know how to reach you if they'd like you to turn, climb, or descend to avoid another airplane - especially a passenger jet on a fixed routing, which would otherwise have to be turned to avoid you. In exchange they help you find other airplanes, so you can keep away from them visually (as is your responsibility in visual conditions), and if you have an emergency they already know exactly where you are. It's super useful and dramatically improves safety and efficiency for everyone. But it's not remotely required, so if it costs money most pilots would simply ignore it - and now they have to turn jets out of the way of some guy bumbling around (as is his right) in a Cessna on a nice day.
Furthermore the US is about the only country where non-career pilots can practically fly by reference to instruments (in the clouds). Having an instrument rating and an instrument-certified small airplane lets you fly in worse weather, but the biggest benefit is that it makes your flights in marginal weather much, much safer. Dangerous "scud-running" with low-to-the-ground clouds and low visibility might be possible, and legal to do visually, but it's far safer to do the flight on instruments instead. A buddy was doing some flying in Finland with an instructor, and the weather started to get worse, so he suggested simply getting an instrument clearance and doing an instrument approach to land - but it would have cost about 200 euros so the instructor wouldn't do it unless he paid.
tl;dr ATC services should not be pay-per-usage as it degrades safety for everyone. Existing mechanisms like fuel taxes are sufficient to cover the cost and encourage all pilots to eagerly use the services, which keeps everyone safer.
Sorry, what's wrong with the regulator operating the infrastructure? The regulators *and* the infrastructure serve the public interest here. The FAA has plenty of faults, but they're not generally of the power-hungry variety.
One of the things the FAA is doing is coordinating the development of unleaded 100-octane avgas. There's been a number of promising developments and some are already on the market. Once the FAA finishes its tests and (as expected) is able to give blanket approval to use the new fuels in every plane where 100LL is currently certified, everyone'll switch over pretty quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Are you OK with getting Al Capone for tax evasion?
That's not remotely the case. There are many circumstances in which someone can be compelled to testify - in fact, the only time you *can't* be compelled to testify is if it's against yourself. The lawsuit is against Uber. Uber can be compelled to produce documents, and so can the people around them if a court can be convinced. Levandowski isn't Uber. And even if it is against yourself, you can absolutely be compelled to hand over documents and other evidence, even if it proves your guilt.
Even in a criminal trial, you can be compelled to testify against yourself - you just have to be granted immunity by the grand jury in exchange. This is common in e.g. drug trials, they'll arrest the user and charge him with a felony, then offer him immunity in exchange for (compelled) testimony against the dealer. You have to be careful though, because if you compel testimony about a murder and the guy says "yes I know who killed him, it was me" - you're SOL.