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Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#91

Post by nathancahill »

6stringmerc wrote: post #89
CraigJPerry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to your parent, the feature is already deployed in popular drones (both dji and 3dr). It's hard to see a market for something already built in for free (airspace restrictions) and anyone familiar with current drones would know this.

Considering the cost of both DJI and 3DR and the inevitable down-stream development and access, unless each and every manufacturer is mandated to include "smart" flight restrictions, then I would say the point stands. Making a useful application and product is fun to spit ball. Whizzing out some sanctimonious pontification is feeble.

Thanks for putting "Intellectual Wannabe Inventor" in your profile, it wasn't clear from that comment.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#92

Post by mindslight »

cpncrunch wrote: post #72
mindslight wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and creation of a law would be voluntary on the part of the government. The end result for the owner is the same - an involuntary restriction of their drone's software. We don't need any more encouragement of device lockdown, treacherous computing, and the general erosion of ownership.

>We don't need any more encouragement of device lockdown, treacherous computing, and the general erosion of ownership. Actually, we do, at least in this case. The majority of users don't know/care about flying close to airports. (See my other comments in the thread). From what I can tell, however, all the larger drones tend to have geofencing already, so perhaps the current de facto situation is adequate.

I'm sympathetic to the criticality of airport approaches, but also sympathetic to people flying drones above their own property to arbitrary heights while informing ATC (perhaps it's time to revisit that previous uncompensated aeronautical space grab). But this balance is orthogonal to what I'm arguing about.

In any industry that adopts treacherous computing, it spreads like cancer. Phones, cars, entertainment, payment cards. Assumptions of the user being hostile get baked into the design and business models, and must be fortified ever-harder over time. In a computing-based world, perverted cultures that mandate closed devices are simply incompatible with individual autonomy and self-reliance. "Selling" a device while retaining control over it is basically fraud.

Pragmatically, I'd be in favor of the "default config" coming with built-in geofencing to avoid thoughtless idiotic situations. But then the ability to change and fully remove that code must also be provided, ideally through well-documented reflashing process. Anything less creates the unavoidable centralizing path down the slippery slope, and from the users' perspective it hardly matters whether it's the manufacturer or government driving the process.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#93

Post by k-mcgrady »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #66
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First you must put a GPS in each device, I think the cheaper drones don't have one. The cheaper ones are frequently controlled by a smartphone app, which can do the geofencing for it.

That would return the GPS coordinates of your phone, not the drone. It would not help unless you started in an airport.

I'm nto sure exactly how these things work but would it not be possible to get the phone GPS and then determine the position of the drone relative to that using whatever wireless tech it's using to communicate? Probably not 100% accurate but it might be good enough to say 'this drone is within 100m of a no-fly zone, stop it.'

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#94

Post by emodendroket »

Karunamon wrote: post #78
emodendroket wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waze seems like insanely dangerous software in the first place. The whole idea of a "social" driving application that constantly pops up little alerts that the driver is supposed to respond to seems to be inviting distracted, dangerous driving.

"Supposed to respond to?" Yes, by driving. The alerts take the form of "Traffic ahead". "Police ahead", etc. There is no interaction required, or even expected unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button. (And if you can't do that safely, given the size and consistent location of the button, you probably shouldn't have a license anyways)

> unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button.

Which is precisely what the app encourages people to do.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#95

Post by Karunamon »

emodendroket wrote: post #94
Karunamon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Supposed to respond to?" Yes, by driving. The alerts take the form of "Traffic ahead". "Police ahead", etc. There is no interaction required, or even expected unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button. (And if you can't do that safely, given the size and consistent location of the button, you probably shouldn't have a license anyways)

> unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button. Which is precisely what the app encourages people to do.

See last line. Nobody's getting into wrecks because of Waze.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#96

Post by emodendroket »

emodendroket wrote: post #94
Karunamon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Supposed to respond to?" Yes, by driving. The alerts take the form of "Traffic ahead". "Police ahead", etc. There is no interaction required, or even expected unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button. (And if you can't do that safely, given the size and consistent location of the button, you probably shouldn't have a license anyways)

> unless you really want to poke the thumbs up "yes, this alert is still valid" button. Which is precisely what the app encourages people to do.

The problem is not the mechanical difficulty of pressing a large button, the problem is that the application popping up alerts and encouraging you to press the button means taking your eyes away from the road.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#97

Post by woodman »

cpncrunch wrote: post #22
nitrogen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about voluntary geofencing here, by the companies themselves. Much as I like the idea of keeping drones away from planes, just look at how governments have abused other "voluntary" restriction systems. For example, ISPs install filters for ostensibly noble causes, then governments commandeer them for more questionable uses.

Sounds like a slippery slope argument. Which governments of civilized, democratic countries have commandeered ISP's filters for questionable uses? If you're talking about the UK porn filter, it is the other way around: government has instituted a law saying they have to do it. Even if it were a law, I don't see the issue that you are arguing. You're essentially saying "I don't want a law that says drones are banned b…

> Sounds like a slippery slope argument.

Strange, I'm having a hard time thinking of a single US government program that hasn't expanded far beyond the original justification. Bureaucracies expand, water is wet. A classic example of a USG switcheroo would be the social security number being used for identification purposes beyond social security administration. A more contemporary example would be the NSA providing intel to the DEA for domestic law enforcement, which I'm sure wasn't part of the founding mission statement.

> Which governments of civilized, democratic countries...

So only a true Scotsman?

> Are you saying you don't want any laws...

Are you saying that if somebody caused an accident with a drone, then prosecutors would just throw up their hands? We already have enough laws on the books to charge anybody for anything. If causing a horrible accident isn't enough of disincentive for a drone operator then I doubt that they'd pay any attention to the FAA.

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#98

Post by johansch »

ultramancool wrote: post #84
gregmac wrote: post #39

Wow, this is an elected official? > Transport minister Robert Goodwill admitted authorities had not yet confirmed whether what struck the Airbus A320 > Mr Goodwill also dismissed calls for tighter rules on drone use to protect against terror threats insisting current rules governing drone use were strong enough. He said it would be much easier for terrorists to attack airports on the ground with rucksacks or car bomb…

> He warned that any moves to enforce geo-fencing rules would be vulnerable to being hacked by "somebody who could get round that software". Indeed very impressive that an elected official understands this. Someone with a little reverse engineering talent can patch something like that without much work for near-free (think bypassing those FCC regulations turning up TX power in your router firmware). Someone with a li…

Realistically speaking, what it means is that this particular minister somehow managed to employ a "technical expert" who actually is just that. Oh, and that this technical expert is both a) competent, and b) has managed to gain the trust of the minister. The combination is probably easier said than done, so props to whoever that person is :).

Re: Drone believed to have hit British Airways flight 'may have been a plastic bag'

#99

Post by stupidcar »

jobu wrote: post #42
k-mcgrady wrote: post #27

Slightly misleading headline. Basically they haven't confirmed it's a drone so they can't rule anything out, or as he puts it "it could have been a plastic bag or something". They don't seem to have any evidence suggesting it's a plastic bag and not a drone (and vice versa).

It's unclear to me why they think it was a drone or a bag instead of a bird. This whole thing seems overblown. They have no idea what they hit, and it didn't cause any damage to the plane.

Um, the whole point of the article was that "they" don't think it was a drone. The idea that it was a drone seems to have come entirely from a single tweet by the local police force, which the media jumped on.
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