tjohns

At least in the US, the current proposed plan is to phase out leaded avgas by 2030: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/draft_unleaded_avgas...

Piston aircraft are vital to training new pilots. Without the piston fleet, you wouldn't have anybody flying anything larger.

Not to mention they're frequently used for air ambulance flights, survey work, and law enforcement. The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston aircraft.

Also, the current proposed plan is to migrate off of leaded gasoline for most of the country by 2030, which is actually quite ambitious given that acceptable alternative fuels didn't exist until literally a few years ago.

There definitely is urgency to phase out leaded aviation gasoline. The FAA is proposing that we phase it out by 2030 - just 4 years from now - even though we still haven't agreed on which of the 3 competing gas blends to standardize on, the pumping infrastructure only exists at a small number of airports, and even though there's still open concerns about them causing engine damage.

They just published a draft version of the transition plan here: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/draft_unleaded_avgas...

It would be under the FCC regs, not the FAA regs.

Whatever transmitter you're using would not be type-accepted for operation on the 1080 MHz or 978 MHz band. (47 USC § 301)

Additionally, RF operation with the intent of willful interference is inherently illegal. (47 USC § 333)

Carrier-level telco is labor intensive.

You're building new cell towers, managing countless failed backhual links (thanks to fiber's natural enemy, the backhoe), working with whatever obscure bugs your MVNOs have managed to uncover, certifying new cell phone designs, and still working on upgrading everything to 5G while simultaneously planning for 6G (keeping in mind that the 5G network architecture looks radically different than the LTE architecture). Much of that work is necessarily physically distributed across the entire country.

Not to mention dealing with end-user sales and support, which unfortunately often needs physical stores.

I'm not going to say whether 100k is too many, but there's a lot more involved here than just maintenance and monitoring - especially if you want your network capacity to keep up with growing demand.

Sure, but the people doing the recycling have no idea what's inside of it.

The problem is you can’t find any company willing to recycle them. Because of the nicotine content, I’ve heard e-waste recyclers consider them hazardous waste and refuse to touch them.

The biggest tangible benefit is you don't need to worry about NAT port mapping any more. Every device can have a public address, and you can have multiple servers exposing services on the same port without a conflict.

(The flip side is having a network-level firewall is more important than ever.)

You also don't have to worry about running a DHCP server anymore, at least on small networks. The simplicity of SLAAC is a breath of fresh air, and removes DHCP as a single point of failure for a network.

NAT doesn't solve everything, and creates a whole new class of problems that you can just avoid by adopting IPv6 natively. And it's definitely not being ignored at larger companies.

In particular, just off the top of my head...

- T-Mobile US doesn't even assign clients an IPv4 address anymore. Their entire network is IPv6 native.

- Many cloud providers charge extra for IPv4 addresses, but give IPv6 addresses out for free.

They do not used bottled (or boxed) water for coffee.

That comes from the coffee machine built into the galley, which uses the aircraft’s onboard potable water tanks.

Those tanks are filled from a hose by the ground crew during refueling.

(At least for major US airlines. I understand some other carriers serve instant coffee packets. Even then, the hot water still comes from the aircraft tanks.)

AOL was it's own network, completely parallel to the internet. It didn't use TCP/IP, it used a propritary transport called P3 - heavily optimized for dialup.

They had their own dedicated client app, where each page loaded in its own window. It didn't use HTML, it used something called "Rainman". URLs weren't a thing, you accessed "channels" (pages) by entering a specific "keyword".

Later on, in 1993, they added support for Usenet (see: "Eternal September"). Then in 1994 they added support for Gopher and WWW. So you could dial into the AOL client, and then open a regular web browser. But for most home users, there was more content in the AOL walled garden, so the web was something of a curiosity at first.

So to answer your question: It wasn't an artificial limitation. AOL was designed in a way that was fundamentally alien to the way the Internet + Web evolved.

(At some point, you could connect to AOL over TCP/IP - useful if you had a broadband Internet connection but still wanted access to content on the AOL network. This was done by encapsulating P3 inside a TCP/IP header. You still had to use the AOL client software and have an AOL membership.)

Yes, and more...

You can use different antenna designs for a more directional radar beam. Or tilt the beam upwards to steer it around obstacles.

You can also build a moving-target detector by looking at doppler shift to filter out objects that are moving too slowly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_target_indication

The problem is every aircraft model flies differently. The remote pilot would need to be familiar with that particular type of aircraft to safely land it.

> He carried with him a steel pipe, so he could beat a student unconscious who panicked and would not let go of the controls.

Most flight instructors just keep a spare pen in their pocket to jab an uncooperative student in thigh with. (Thankfully almost never used.)

That's a really big if, especially since not all traffic has a transponder, and not all airports are towered.

It would need to understand how to visually look for traffic with a camera, and understand what intentions other pilots are communicating on the radio.

> Didn't you already though?

No, I stated the regulations, in reply to the parent comment about transponder rules.

I don't know what the weather conditions were, I don't know what the sight-picture was from each aircraft, I don't know if any equipment was malfunctioning, and we don't have a statement from the military pilot.

Many pilots are very hesitant to (publicly) assign blame in an incident without all the facts, since the details do matter. It's too easy to jump to conclusions otherwise.

I wasn't there and don't know all the facts, so I'm not going to attempt to assign blame in this specific instance.

But speaking generally, I'll just say: If you're flying in VMC conditions (good weather), you're always required to see-and-avoid. Even if you're on an IFR clearance. Everything else is just considered an aid for situational awareness.

> How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]?

If you're wearing "foggles" (the technical term is a "view limiting device"), you're legally required to have a safety pilot who is responsible for maintaining visual watch.

You never, ever wear those while flying solo.

> And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)?

First, this near-miss was with a refueling tanker, which only travels at normal large-jet speed and is quite large.

If it was a fighter jet, you're right, it would be very hard to see. But frankly, compared to a fighter jet, everyone else might as well be a stationary object in the sky in terms of speed and maneuverability - so you're just relying on the fighter jet not to hit you. (They also have onboard primary radar and other fancy toys - so you hope they have more situational awareness of non-participating aircraft.)

> The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic.

Most airspace below 18,000 feet is still "controlled airspace", even though you have to look out for traffic - including commercial traffic. The big jets don't like to stay down there any longer than they have to, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

Being on an IFR clearance only guarantees that you're deconflicted with other IFR traffic. There's always the risk that there's non-participating traffic, especially in visual conditions (VMC). Class A airspace and transponder-required airspace help reduce this risk, but it's never completely eliminated.

Also, more importantly: The military largely plays by their own rules, entirely outside of the FAA.

> Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions?

As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.)

No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done.

The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar.

(Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)

> The idea that a position of authority means ~anything~ anymore is completely ridiculous.

In that case, should we just get rid of licensure for professional engineers while we're at it? No special education or experience needed to build a bridge, nuclear reactors, or life-critical systems... since authority is meaningless now in the age of the internet?

The medical field isn't perfect, but it's hubris to believe that most people will perform better at treating disease than somebody with 11 years (minimum) of specialized education and countless hours of experience in a real clinical setting.

I think it's good to read papers and be curious.

It's also good to work with your doctors (as you seem to have done), have a discussion, and mutually agree on a plan of treatment.

Experts don't know everything. But they probably know some things you don't, and can think of questions you might not to have even thought to ask. As the saying goes, "you don't know what you don't know". Experience matters.

There's also a lot of people out there without an academic background that don't know how to properly read journal papers. It's common to see folks do a quick search on PubMed, cherry-pick a single paper they agree with, and treat it as gospel - even if there's no evidence of repeatability. These skills are not something that many people outside STEM are exposed to.

Some folks actually were taught to use em-dashes as part of their normal writing, especially if you've taken a technical writing course.

I dislike that people think you're an AI if you're using proper typography. :(

States that have implemented mobile drivers licenses are starting to issue handheld readers to police officers, precisely so what you describe doesn't happen.

The people building this know nobody wants to hand their phone over to the police.

Passports are inherently decentralized, which is needed because not all countries cooperate with each other - or have the same budget for technology/security. It's really way something at global scale could work.

(There are national-level databases, but presumably not every country has access to every other country's database.)

Yes, that's correct. There have been apps on iOS and Android that can read your passport via NFC for ages. As you noted, all you need is the plaintext information printed on the photo page to generate the Basic Access Control key, which will let you connect to the passport's NFC chip.

Issuing a passport is a different issue entirely, since you need a country's document signing key.

Airplane autopilots are basically just cruise control.

You still have a human in the loop double checking everything constantly and stepping in as soon as something isn’t routine (which is actually quite frequently).

Air traffic also requires the use of visual skills - and it’s harder than driving because of the small target size and wide field of view.

“See and avoid” has a very high priority in the cockpit - not everything out there is on radar, not everything on radar is under ATC control.

Yes, you're right. Thanks!

(I just edited my post, and also linked to a 2019 law that guarantees back-pay for both essential and non-essential federal workers.)

Historically, congress always passed a one-time bill to retroactively pay the federal employees after each shutdown.

Because it turns out not paying your workers is extremely unpopular, especially if you want to retain them as workers in the future. Most people (federal workers included) are living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't financially weather a furlough - they still need to pay rent. The federal government would quickly find itself unable to attract employees given how often shutdowns occur.

After 2019, congress passed a law that guaranteed back-pay for future shutdowns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Employee_Fair_Treat...

Accelerated hardware instructions for cryptographic primitives, like AES or SHA-256.

See: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/101754/0624/armclang...