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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

It's really transparent to anyone who's flown. He spends no time debugging, no time communicating, no time looking for somewhere to land. He had a lot of altitude and his immediate thought was "Oh ok I guess it's broken, seeeeyaaaaa".

Amongst all the other callouts, like why a parachute, why so many cameras strapped up, some timeline incongruities, some camera shot incongruities. His flight path made no sense. It was well executed enough to trick your regular view I'm sure, but it did not stand up to scrutiny, and you better believe the FAA was going to scrutinize.

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It was really obvious to me as someone who hasn't flown, even. As a layman it was obvious there would be at least a checklist of things you'd try first.

Like to get the engine running again, figure out if there's anywhere close enough to land/ditch safely, radio ATC, etcetera. And he didn't appear surprised or stressed out, he looked like he was expecting it.

Plus having the parachute on in advance, and so many cameras?

But this guy? This guy just pressed triangle and immediately pulled a full on GTA-V move.

Also pretty obvious that this guy is no outdoorsman. He complains about not being able to get signal so he can call 911, but then he walks down a ravine and then down a dry river bed. In that situation, you need to climb UP, not down, and get as much elevation and clearance as possible.

Fun factoid: one of the cornerstone references for search-and-rescue planning is a reference work called "Lost Person Behavior"[1] ... it has empirical data on how people tend to behave in various situations based on categorization of their circumstances.

For example, despondent people have historically tended to behave differently from those suffering dementia or lost hikers or plane crash survivors.

The text includes statistical data on where lost people have been found relative to the initial planning point for a search (e.g. last known point) - how far away, what type of terrain, whether they tend to go uphill or downhill etc.

One of the largest step-changes in lost person behavior came with the general adoption of the cellphone: many, many people now tend to go uphill than before - specifically in the hope of finding cellphone coverage.

[1] https://www.dbs-sar.com/LPB/lpb.htm

>One of the largest step-changes in lost person behavior came with the general adoption of the cellphone: many, many people now tend to go uphill than before - specifically in the hope of finding cellphone coverage.

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

Historically, it was pretty situational if you should stay put and make yourself safe and visible to rescuers or if you should try to self-rescue. But my sense is today the general impulse is to call for rescue--with the caveat that many of the places people are most likely to get in trouble are the least likely to have cell phone reception.

If you get high enough, in many places you’ll eventually hit line of sight to at least some cell tower. I’ve gone deep into wilderness areas and it isn’t uncommon to get cell coverage somewhere on a ridge line or mountain peak. Often strong enough that you can hit Facebook, upload pictures, download offline maps, or even videos.

It’s kind of nuts, really.

Can confirm. In general, Death Valley has no signal. However, when my wife and I biked from saline valley to racetrack valley up the Lippincott road, we kept finding little spots of reasonably strong cell signal - enough that we were able to wait here: 8584JCR4+6C and get enough signal to download a new audiobook.

Our whole time left in DV, we never found any other reliably strong signal.

As of a few years ago Furnace Creek had cell service (it didn't used to) but Death Valley as a whole doesn't have much coverage. You were presumably seeing a tower somewhere in the mountains west of Death Valley.

Headed downhill into a ravine might make sense if you're looking for water (water flows down, after all).

I'm mildly amused that we have trained ourselves into anti-survival behaviors- head uphill where there is less water, more exposure to elements, etc. (of course, being uphill might make you more visible, but that's assuming anyone is coming anytime immediately soon)

Depends entirely on the situation. If a ten minute hike uphill gives you the ability to make a phone call, it's a pretty reasonable first step.

AMEL IA here.

I've seen a lot of near-accident videos and they all show the initiation of the accident sequence and allow you to step through the process the PIC went through to either _cause_ and/or _get out of_ the incident. This video had none of those qualities. Trim for best glide speed? Nope. Head on a swivel looking for suitable alternates? Nope. The performative display of pumping the yoke? Engine is out and the pilot is trying to do what? Precipitate an aerodynamic stall?

I can think of very few disciplines that are more contradictory than the juxtaposition of aviation with the "influencer"/social media spectrum. Hopefully the FAA revocation of his certificate paves the way for law enforcement to look into fraud and other issues.

> AMEL IA here.

If you're not one of Tony Stark's AIs, what might this mean?

Airplane, Multi-engine, Land.

IA seems to mean he is a flight instructor.

Exactly! I wonder why he didn't at least act like he ran out of options before bailing out. "OK, there's an airport over there." <banks slightly> "Oh crap, I'm losing too much altitude! I'll never make it! Time to bail out! Buy a Ridge Wallet!"

> He spends no time debugging, no time communicating, no time looking for somewhere to land.

Yup. He spent most of his time doing absolutely nothing, just maintaining back-pressure on the yoke and holding the aircraft in the stall.

I suppose at least he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics. Somehow he does not strike me as the sort of person who could manage to recover from a wing-drop and induced spin.

Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform

> Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform

I was nodding until this bit... why do you think YouTube should censor this? It's a real video of a real thing that he did (which he misrepresents the circumstances of). I could possibly get on board with "put an explanatory note next to it" or "don't let him get ad revenue from it", but what possible reason would there be for deleting it?

There doesn't need to be a reason, if YouTube want's to remove a video from their platform they are free to do so.

But why would YouTube want to do that? What he did is obviously wrong, dangerous, and stupid, but still I see no reason from YouTube's side to remove the video.

Perhaps they would remove it if they are concerned their platform could be incentivizing wrong, dangerous or stupid behavior and they worry about the brand damage that does or have ethical problems profiting off that.

This is what I was thinking. I didn't find the video here on HN. A few weeks ago my 11 year old son told me about it. Like a lot of kids his age, becoming a YouTuber is aspirational, and his reaction was "that is crazy" but it was also "this guy just raised the ante on Mr. Beast." It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.

"Wrong" = criminal (?) maybe. Though this guy hasn't actually been prosecuted and may well never be.

But if you're going to ban dangerous/stupid video someone has to make that determination. And you can be sure that there are a ton of activities that are dangerous/stupid in the eyes of some people (even understandably so). BASE jumping, wingsuits, really any kind of extreme sports, stuff with explosives, etc.

> It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.

People were doing stupid stuff before YouTube existed. As long as it's legal (which this stunt was not) who cares? Teach your son why he shouldn't do that kind of stuff instead of turning to censorship.

Nowhere did I advocate censorship. But I do think it should be illegal because this stunt could have started a wildfire if the plane had started burning.

“Son of Sam” laws in the US prohibit individuals from publicly profiting off their crimes.

Then demonetize it, don’t remove it.

I might be missing the point, but I’m not getting this glorification of stupid acts.

It is annoying to see idiots get a lot of attention, but really, it is not a glorification of a stupid act, it is just a video of one. Furthermore, it would live on in all of those videos that point out just how stupid it was, unless Youtube also removes those - but they are informative, I would say.

What glorification? This is a thing that happened, and it's incredibly newsworthy. Prevent him from profiting off the video and leave it up. There is no reason to do anything further from YouTube's perspective.

How is "treat this video like any other video" (i.e. do nothing) a "glorification"? There are tons of videos of incredibly stupid and dangerous acts on YouTube.

I'm generally in favor of idiots that do illegal things then posting video evidence of them online. I don't think it glorifies the act if YouTube then demonetized the video with a note & link back to the FAA's ruling. Showing stupid things & their consequences seems reasonable.

Would you feel the same if this became the top watched video for weeks, with a lively comment section mostly leaning towards "omg that is so cool! I want to top this!!!"?

I wouldn't - which is why I don't mind if it's taken down.

I'm hesitant to advocate taking something down. I'm not saying it should never happen, but this doesn't cross the threshold for me. In this instance the video creator wasn't encouraging people to do this and the audience response wasn't to jump in and do the same thing. Also videos that would fit this category-- filmed evidence of illegal activity & subsequent consequences (which I think Google should add to the video)-- are not likely to become popular in the thought experiment you describe. If they did, maybe I'd revisit my opinion.

On the other hand, if content is encouraging people to do harmful or dangerous things then that becomes a different issue. I'm less uncomfortable with YouTube trying to stop Tide Pod Challenge videos which were basically encouraging such activity: The first two weeks of 2018 saw about as many poisoning reports from this as most entire years before then. [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220412042754/https://time.com/...

The existence of something is not glorifying it.

That doesn't mean the video has to be taken off.

Simply collect the ill-gotten gains from the perpetrator. The video seems like evidence anyway, should be part of the public record.

YouTube hosts lots of crime that gets monetized.

That's at least 90% false in law and practice.

https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1242/son-of-sam-law...

Very good for actually researching and not just commenting because of raw emotions. Honestly a breath of fresh air to be honest.

Plus... he has yet to be charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime?

He spends most of his time worrying about taping it for YouTube.

> he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics

Evidence suggests he may have bought the plane explicitly for this stunt. He's an experienced sky diver, so I imagine he knows what kind of plane is good for a pilot looking to bail.

As a regular viewer (I don't fly) it still looked off.

I don’t even think it was enough to trick a regular viewer. It was pretty over the top!

His door already being open while the engine turns off.

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