_s

It definitely isn’t! The problem is when individuals with dubious motivations and skills are given access to a platform that influences tens or hundreds of millions.

The blessing and curse of having the worlds information at our fingertips is that we can usually find the data, groups and echo chambers to mirror any narrative.

If you were hesitant about certain medical procedures, you now have access to groups and data that can and will reaffirm that you should not undergo that procedure because of X, Y & Z.

Wether X, Y & Z are directly relevant, or even statistically probable - it doesn’t matter anymore. Group think, peer pressure, societal pressures and desires to be “free” and “independent” etc start to reign.

The backlash against Spotify is warranted - it’s just a large corporation that people can condem and refuse to do business with. Same with governments.

Perhaps not exactly the same analogy, but muslims won’t generally use the services offered by a Church, or some people might go see their Shaman over a GP, or vegans will avoid the meat-heavy BBQ place. We have our beliefs, some are misguided, some are dangerous. Covid is pretty dangerous, and deadly to certain demographics.

Pilot here, all distance and speeds are in nautical miles / hours. Mach numbers are also used often for faster / higher aircraft.

Weight / volume changes from gallons to litres to cubic meters to cubic feet depending on US/RoW.

Height is always in feet.

^^ This 1000x.

Humans are incredibly expensive and notoriously unreliable when compared against “machines”; or in this case an API.

It’s usually worth paying 2-3x the cost to have someone else manage something for you with a given SLA, because that’s what it will end up being when you decide to bring it in house when you take into account the time and effort needed as well.

A “good” & “reliable” Systems Engineering team, that can offer 24/7 support will take around a year to hire and setup, and they need roughly the same amount of time to transition you off AWS in to your system. They probably need closer to 3-5yrs to give the same level of documentation, API’s, tooling, processes, UI’s and training that AWS already provides.

Let’s call it 5 years to get to the level of AWS when you started the transition.

A decent team of 5-7, including engineers + PO/PM + UX and so forth, is at least $1.5M/yr. That’s $7.5M over 5 years, not including your new hardware and networking costs. Let’s call it $10M. You’re also 5 years behind AWS now, and over that transition you’re still paying AWS, and your development speed has halved as you wait for your new team to build or transition infrastructure.

You can trade cost and quality for speed and have everything ready in 2-3 years by setting up a few teams. Add HR support, more contractors etc etc. you’re looking at a $10M+ outlay again, regardless.

Or you can keep paying AWS $5M/yr, renegotiate fees often and literally not worry about that headache and focus on your product.

This is fascinating!

A few comments have mentioned the cost to the airline for running the route - the author talks about revenue, not profit - but most, if not all the costs are calculated on time, not distance.

Nearly everything in an aircraft has a maintenance window / shelf life measured in minutes / hours / days / months / years. The JFK - LON route could be 7 hours, or 5 hours depending on prevailing winds.

That’s an extra 2 hours you have to pay the flight crew, run the engines, maybe even an extra meal for the passengers and so forth.

Weather has an astounding affect on how much a given flight will cost, and probably traffic is the next one - hence why landing / gate spots at busy airports are so expensive.

Crew are legally mandated to only work X hours in a given time frame (both active and standby), so if you’re held up in the air or on the ground, especially on a long haul flight - you might not be legally clear to make that flight!

There’s a whole field of dispatch operations for aviation that handles this, and for the finance folks - the financial model for aviation is just subtly different enough to cause a few headaches if you’re not aware.

Just started with iCloud Beta’s custom domains, pretty smooth so far.

I’m not a Elon Musk fan at all, but I thought it’s well known to pretty much add a factor of 10x to whatever his timelines or estimates are?

Though I would disagree with his personality built on being right - it’s built on being a futuristic visionary problem solver. Whether he’s actually solving problems, and whether they even need to be solved, that’s up for debate.

That’s the only comment there I’m unsure about - bottled water is pretty much filtered tap water in most places. There’s direct spring water and rain water you can use - but they have varying minerals again, and then are you distilling water for pure H2O? I actually don’t know what the author means here.

I do concur with consistency and then changing only one variable at a time - beans, temps, ground amount & size, water type(?), extraction time / length / size. It’s probably something I haven’t paid any attention to and have my favourite spots to get coffee from.

My partner is a journalist in a specific niche (science).

Unfortunately - folks have shown time and time again they will not pay content when an alternative is available for free.

Most, if not all journalists, would prefer to be do doing investigative work over a few weeks and months - highlighting what is in the publics interests.

Publishers on the other hand, with the sales / advertising / marketing requirements & constraints, would much prefer they crunch out 10x stories a day that can drive traffic (ergo revenue).

What you are left with are tight deadlines, incredibly poor pay, and most of the experienced folks who actually care about what articles are written under their name just hanging up their pens and taking up cushy gigs in comms / marketing.

Journalism still exists, but has been dying steadily - nearly all folks in positions of wealth and power would prefer it didn't exist, and for the folks that should be reading what they write - they won't pay for it, and won't trust it.

It depends on the airframe - but I believe for Airline Transport category aircraft a storm scope and a few others are required.

It is a requirement - AWIS/ATIS and ATC/Tower (all via radio) can provide weather information at airfields, and a lot of instrument approaches do require certain readings before an approach can be commenced.

I'll add to this (as a private pilot) - there are also a lot of requirements of weather at your destination; in terms of wind, visibility, temperatures and how long those forecasts are valid for and so forth.

In order to dispatch a flight you need to ensure that the weather at the arrival airport meets certain minima at that point in the future (hence the need for forecasts), and so does that at suitable alternative airports, and enough fuel is carried to be able to divert (depending on a heap of other factors such as aircraft load, capacity, prevailing winds enroute, at destination, time of day and so forth).

Aircraft are then also required to check the AWIS/ATIS or the Tower (usually the most reliable source of weather at an airfield) to ensure that the weather at the destination is within their safe margins.

There's the FAA requirements, and then airlines and aircraft and airports then also have their own established minimum requirements that all need to be within the safe range.

You can certainly dispatch a flight with potential updates and diversions as they progress / get closer to the destination, but with an outage and no means to update the enroute aircraft - there's usually no easy safe or legal way to dispatch them.

If you’re a “professional” (engineers, lawyers, doctors etc) in any capacity; you will be given more - but for the majority of the workforce in retail, hospitality, services - you are much worse off; the European social support is geared towards a more even society.

Private Pilot here - just thought I'd chime in quickly;

Many aviation enthusiasts / pilots first go to is to have a look at the flight data - usually available on FlightAware / FlightRadar24 and a few other websites, plus LiveATC usually can provide recordings of the flights communications to towers as well. We should refrain from using just those data points to draw conclusions to the cause; the NTSB (and other orgs) will perform an investigation and the report will be made public (both interim, and final ones), and changes are almost always made to processes / systems, and often to the virtual or physical items that led to this incident.

There are a few more photos and insights from various folks that were there at the time and captured a few moments on the reddit thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/nauck8/mid_air_just...

Note - it's incredibly rare for a midair not to result in fatalities so an incredible amount of luck all around.

> The best GPS resolution available to civilians is about 8 meters (26 feet) - and that's under the best, most ideal situation using the best GPS receiver and a large antenna... things a small cell phone in a pocket or bag doesn't have.

I am not sure where you got this from but that is incorrect - the accuracy (or resolution) depends entirely on the number of satellites and/or augmentation systems you're tapped into, and how strong / clear those signals are. It can vary from a few kilometres down to a few centimetres.

Back in the 90's "Selective Availability" was a thing but it has since been removed.

See https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

Also - most modern phones can and do tap into the major providers (Galileo, Glonass, GPS etc), towers, WiFi spots, beacons and use all of these to give a a VERY accurate position of where the device is.

Edit: Might mention I worked first hand on indoor tracking of users, and a warehouse project for optimising worker picking - we were able to easily distinguish where a person was in a busy retail setting down to which section of a clothes rack they were selecting clothes from, and exactly where a worker was in a very interference-heavy (metals) warehouse floor using the above mentioned technologies.

Partially - suppliers can offset that by increasing their cost to do business; but also most contracts in that world are multi-year deals with ranges of minima / maxima for quantity, time etc.

g@<emoji>.kz

Isn’t “Paki” just shortened for “Pakistani”? I never knew the word itself to be considered racist; but it’s definitely been used often in a racist / degenerative context and manner.

Most light sport aircraft are day VFR only, with an altimeter and airspeed indicator being the primary instruments. Some ultra lights don’t even have those, and you use visual cues and the “feel” of the craft to judge your energy/speed/height - and our perceptions are not the most reliable.

I think for EV’s the traffic impact isn’t that valid - you need to aim for around 100km/h for greatest efficiency (watt/km), and then there’s the charging of the batteries - usually an hour or two with fast charging.

Being fairly active on social media; especially GIF or video heavy websites will see you churn through 1-2gb a day easily.

WhatsApp and enabling calls a few years ago, that one irked me the most.

> For flying jets though (assuming this is what the GP means when mentioning the respect for airline pilots), you'll have some higher numbers, and you'll use the thrust for speed rather than the "counter intuitive" approach you'd use in a smaller aircraft.

Minor point - fairly certain power applications are used regardless of the size of aircraft to control the rate of descent.

Pitch + Power = Performance

You're essentially trying to get back on your landing descent profile.

Too low? Add power, pitch up slightly to maintain speed, reduce rate of descent. Too high? Remove power, pitch down slightly to maintain speed, increase rate of descent.

It is somewhat counter intuitive, but power does not have a "direct" relation with speed, but certainly impacts it.

Even if you fly straight and level, and start adding power - the increase airflow over the wings/elevators will cause a pitch up / lift, your speed will decrease which will need counteracting by a slight downwards pitch to maintain straight / level, and only then would you see a speed increase. There will always be a point where the aircraft just settles into a given configuration of power and pitch/attitude, giving you a specific horizontal/vertical speed.

You yourself mention pointing the aircraft down (pitch), thus gaining speed (without touching the power), which is exactly the counter-intuitive approach to power/speed.

I may not be explaining it well but here's a decent article:

http://txtopaviation.com/pitch-power-performance/

And you'll find quite a few more if you go searching.

I also highly recommend looking up the pilot owner manuals, they give you performance tables for given configurations (rpm, power, density, altitude, fuel, temp etc), and of course what power settings to use and numbers to hit for various stages of flight.

I do concur with all your other points though, it's an absolute blast - especially in VR. And of course, I can't encourage folks enough to try out the real thing, I find it easier than driving a car! :)

Private pilot here -

It’s not that difficult to land; especially in a sim where you can experiment without worry.

It’s all in the setup - as you line up on your final approach, make sure you are at a prescribed speed and rate of descent; generally in a small plane (172 etc), you’re aiming for around 300-500ft/m at 70-80kts, and the plane is pointing to hit the runway at the threshold (piano keys / white lines).

Counter intuitive: Throttle controls rate of descent, elevators control speed. Mess around until you feel these two things clicking.

When you’re around 20-30ft above the threshold, reduce power to idle, keep the aircraft straight and level or the nose just slightly high and just let the plane drop on to the runway!

Whatever you do - don’t force it, take your time and you’ll have far more fun actually going to places and stopping there!

Santa? Tooth Fairy? Easter Bunny? Disney Land?

Memories are real, experiences are as real as one wants them to be.

We all learn critical thinking and separating fact from fiction eventually, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look back fondly on experiences you enjoyed as a kid.

Most are negatively geared regardless; so the losses are just taken off your taxable income.

Isn’t that the same argument that can be applied to health? Vaccines, clean water, fluoride etc promote your well-being, and protect you from various bacteria and viruses. Why shouldn’t you protect your “digital” self as well?

The operating costs for air or sea going vehicles is a lot of the time - at minimum - their purchase price, per year.

Buy a kayak for $100? You need around $100/yr in storage, cleaning and upkeep for it.

Buy a glider for $10k? You need around $10k/yr in maintenance, hangarage, taxes, insurance etc.

Buy a jet for $1M? You’ll spend that much on a hanger, crew, fuel, taxes, mechanics, parts, insurance etc etc.

Get an aircraft carrier for $1B? You’ll spend that much on crew, ports, maintenance, munition, training etc etc.

Sure you _can_ do it cheaper, but it’s a good rule of thumb from a budgetary point of view.

Pilot here - that’s wildly incorrect.

Smooth does not equal greater chance of bounce. Smooth is not riskier.

A smooth landing is entirely down to the rate of descent from the flare. Yes you have ground effect to contend with, but wind / gusts, your approach speed over the threshold, the flare, your crosswind technique play a far greater part in ensuring the plane sets down gently.

Some days you’ll land smooth as butter. Other days you’ll be porpoising down half the runway thinking “So this is what pilot induced oscillations are”, before going around.

Generally big jets have to get all their main gear down, and if there’s a >10kt crosswind usually they’ll always come in a crab and straighten out as the wheels touch - those will always feel rough.

No pilot purposefully does hard landings; the co-pilot / captain has a litany of jokes lined up for such a scenario.

Most runways are long enough to bleed off any excess energy, and those that aren’t - well, you go around; but most airlines / pilots have minimums to be established in a stable approach by (way before getting to the flare) - if that doesn’t happen they’re following their “missed approach” procedure and trying again.

Yup; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_vertical_separation_...

A plane can ascend/descend fast, but generally stick to either 500 or 1000ft/min.