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AWildC182on ADS-B Exchange – Co-op of unfiltered flight data

This was actually how I stumbled upon it. There was a helicopter with a camera gimbal and what appeared to be a radar pod of some sort circling my city. I wanted to see if it was related to our local dystopian-augmented-reality-aerial-imaging-startup and lo and behold, their similarly unlisted cessna caravan covered in camera and weapon pylons was flying nearby...

AWildC182on ADS-B Exchange – Co-op of unfiltered flight data

Good points all around. I figured the exceptions were esoteric enough to not bother with immediately but are very valid.

I'm interested in seeing where the proposal goes. I'm not sure where I stand on the issue but I'm curious of others opinions.

AWildC182on ADS-B Exchange – Co-op of unfiltered flight data

Context: As of the beginning of 2020 all aircraft are required to have ADS-B out capability. This means that they periodically broadcast their GPS position unencrypted, along with their speed, altitude, heading and tail number.

Most networks like Flight Aware allow owners to blacklist aircraft such that their tracks do not appear on the site. This is typical of corporate aviation departments and private jet owners as they don't want their movements to be available to rivals/hedge funds or the media. Additionally military aircraft are typically not reported.

Edit: also, for those who are unaware, unlike license plates which are generally unsearchable, tail-numbers as reported by ADS-B are publicly searchable with registration and history information available on the FAA website:

https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?N...

AWildC182on Indian police open case against hundreds in Kashmir for using VPN

Just because it's successful in the US doesn't stop politicians from trying to enact the same measures here as well. We need to continue to fight back at every turn such that we don't go down the same path.

AWildC182on Colorado voters are set to decide if wolves should be reintroduced to the state

Most of those areas are pivoting to tourism with the exception of maybe South Park which is desolate enough I don't see wolves making a habitat there.

Cow excrement is absolutely not just fermented grass. It contains pathogens that can be harmful to humans and end up in drinking water. Cows have existed in this area for less than 200 years, out of the millions of years the biome has existed. It's absolutely an emotional issue if you don't understand how ecosystems work.

I'd rather not give out too many personal details of my living situation but it's safe to say my little car doesn't get much use at all.

AWildC182on Colorado voters are set to decide if wolves should be reintroduced to the state

They do graze in the mountains, just not much compared to the rest of the state. Not really a fan of that either as the cows leave excrement all over trails and roads. If this prevented the practice and nothing else I'd still be for it. Cows aren't supposed to be part of nature, they're an environmental disaster themselves.

This seems to be mostly just an emotional appeal rather than a practical one.

Also, we should totally get rid of the refinery too, I'm all for equal opportunity environmentalism.

AWildC182on Colorado voters are set to decide if wolves should be reintroduced to the state

I'm an actual Coloradan. Very little livestock grazing is in the mountains where the wolves would presumably be. It's almost entirely out on the plains surrounded my a thousands of miles of barbed wire fences and desolate nothingness.

Even if the wolves do venture out into the plains, it would be much appreciated because my office currently smells like cow shit given that there's a north-easterly wind and Greeley is in that direction with it's horrendous feed lots.

AWildC182on Lax FAA oversight let Southwest Airlines put millions of passengers at risk

You won't be conscious if you're falling 7 miles[1]. Most accidents are at takeoff and landing so at worst you'll fall between 1 and 4 miles while conscious but most likely on the lower end of that scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness

AWildC182on Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

Sort of implies that copper smelting was really the important innovation, to warrant the need for electricity?

In all seriousness though, the printed circuit board might be a good one to bundle with that. The old methods of creating a mechanically robust compact electrical package were nowhere near as efficient. They're also very recent and very easy to make yourself, even if it's thin plywood with tinfoil glued on.

AWildC182on Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

Depends heavily on your definition of "build yourself"...

The airplane is a big one and I'm building one myself in my garage, as did the inventors of the first airplane. Hell, a solid chunk of all other inventions were created in someones garage. Compared to a full scale airplane, making nuclear reactors or transistors yourself is even easier and the transistor is easily the single biggest invention of the past century.

AWildC182on Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

Back when radioshack existed they used to sell kits where you could assemble a crystal radio out of a handful of simple parts. This was the first real project my dad and I ever did and I was just a little kid at the time.

AWildC182on Audit Initiated of FAA's Pilot Training Requirements

It does, but it's not at all related to what they're talking about here, at least as far as the text describes.

The issue is that large aircraft require an aircraft model specific training program called a type rating which is rather involved and expensive. Both Boeing and Airbus have common type ratings across multiple aircraft models and sub-models to save on training costs for airlines. To do this, they need to maintain a high degree of controls and systems commonality between the types and in this case, they fudged these limitations by adding a system which was a significant departure from the older 737 type and type rating training programs without requiring additional training on the MAX sub-model.

AWildC182on Audit Initiated of FAA's Pilot Training Requirements

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_transport_pilot_licenc...

The 1500 hour rule was initially instated by the FAA. CASA followed suit but EASA did not for co pilots.

AWildC182on Audit Initiated of FAA's Pilot Training Requirements

Eh... It's more complicated than that. The US ATPs have a few other hoops to jump through beyond the exam. There are ground training requirements and a checkride to high precision standards. The US is also unusual in requiring 1500 flight hours of experience.

AWildC182on Audit Initiated of FAA's Pilot Training Requirements

This sounds a lot like a political deflection rather than a hammer. The wording suggests an angle towards foreign "international" standards rather than just domestic. This also subtly passes blame towards pilots and their training rather than the extremely lax airframe certification standards.

AWildC182on The Disneyfication of a University

I used to work in a facility that was doing manufacturing as well as software/engineering. The manufacturing techs were generally treated like cattle and subjected to this stuff as most of them were max high school level education and/or foreign and while plenty intelligent, didn't have the financial capability to tell them to fuck off. As such they were generally able get them to play along with all the synergizification training because whether they bought into it or not, they were conditioned to play along through social pressure.

I think what we're seeing is the same principles that worked on the mid century manufacturing laborers being refined for the information economy age.

AWildC182on Europe Just Voted in Favor of Making iPhone and Android Use the Same Charger

Qi generates excess heat which degrades the batteries glued in to smart phones, thereby increasing e-waste.

AWildC182on Scientists Sue FCC for Ignoring Cell Phone Radiation Risk

In both of those cases an causal link was established. Unless you have actual evidence cell phones cause cancer you can't say something is bad because you feel like it might be bad in the same way you can't say vaccines are evil because they feel like they might be bad.

AWildC182on Scientists Sue FCC for Ignoring Cell Phone Radiation Risk

That's not really how science works. You can't prove anything doesn't cause cancer in any way, but nobody has been able to demonstrate RF causing cancer. If you just assume everything causes cancer then you get California prop 65 style warnings on EVERYTHING and nobody takes anything seriously anymore.

AWildC182on Scientists Sue FCC for Ignoring Cell Phone Radiation Risk

RF software person here. I strongly encourage anyone reading this headline to take it with a MASSIVE grain of salt. There hasn't been any conclusive science on the issue and people aren't dropping dead from cell phone death rays left and right.

The RF emitted by cell phones and even 5G systems is many orders of magnitude lower energy than the light you're exposed to all day. The only connection we know of at the moment would be through RF heating but that requires way more radiated power than anything you will likely interact with unless you stick your head in a microwave oven.

Edit: also, things RF can interact with are dependent on feature size. 5GHz has a wavelength of ~6cm so in the same way that you can't see a virus with a microscope because it's too small for light to interact with, it's just not going to be able to cause localized heating on anything smaller than about 3cm. The singular scientist in the article is mostly just taking issue with the testing methodology and wants software to minimize RF emissions to the lowest level possible for communication which is already the case as otherwise your battery would be depleted very rapidly.

AWildC182on German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

True, but it doesn't seem to really be the problem right now. The overwhelming majority of people don't need to be told to spend money. If they have it, they'll spend it on stuff, for better or worse.

Looking back at the past half century the big variables that have changed to get us here seem to be A) lack of world wars to devastate Europe B) rising automation leading to skyrocketing worker productivity C) society's wealth becoming increasingly concentrated within a billionaire class and D) relatively flat wage growth to spite B. There are also probably a few other's I'm missing too.

TLDR seems like there's a bigger picture to the macroeconomic situation than just spending and saving at the moment. I'm really curious to see how this will shake out going forward.

AWildC182on German banks are hoarding so many euros they need more vaults

Have there been any major issues with declining QOL in Japan? It might be a cultural barrier but aside from the deflation stories making the rounds, I don't hear much about them suffering because of it.

AWildC182on [dead]

You don't even need a wheelbarrow full of phones to do this. Just spoof GPS on a massive cluster of emulators...

AWildC182on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2020)

Are you guys expanding exponentially or is your turnover obscene? I don't think I've yet to see a Who's Hiring without an Occipital post...

AWildC182on Airports for the Supersonic Age

Hardly a fantasy. Just look at the reqs for Amazon's HQ2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements

AWildC182on Airports for the Supersonic Age

This is a really good question. It's a complicated issue and depends on some definitions.

If we didn't build any and decided we wanted massive air travel now? Yep.

If we are only talking about travel between class B airports (basically any major city: LAX, DEN, ORD...)? Not really? DEN for instance was rebuilt in a new location around 1995.

What about literally all airports? Yes, but not really because of this era. We built tons of airports all over the country during WWII and the early cold war for military purposes. The FAA gave out tons of money to municipalities to build airports in places we'd never have them today, see KSMO[1]. Between this and funding from the federal government to subsidize routes serving far flung communities, we're seeing a lot of air travel that wouldn't exist otherwise. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it allows these smaller communities to remain connected and support larger businesses. If this situation didn't exist it would put yet more pressure on massive landlocked urban centers to support everyone converging on them and make them the only locales that could support major businesses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future

AWildC182on Airports for the Supersonic Age

Worse yet, if you just disable scripts entirely the page renders beautifully and you can click on the images to expand them and actually read the tiny text.

AWildC182on Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States

....no they don't. They actively avoid the GPL versions of various things they use so they don't have to give back even though it hurts their users.