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

telegraph.co.uk

151–160 of 176 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alert I see the most with Waze is "Vehicle stopped on shoulder", which is not only distracting when the yellow sign pops down and animates out, but can't possibly be relevant to my life when I'm driving in the left lane. Most of the rest are fine.

You can turn on and off each individual notification. And it also has voice commands built in to control the app. You don't even need the phone's screen on. It can be in your pocket while driving. And it is relevant to you no matter what lane you are in. If there is a car on the shoulder, someone in the right lane could be not paying attention, and swerve into you to avoid that car. Though you should be always on hig…

Wouldn't it be safer to pay attention to the road and notice someone swerving your way than to get an alert, look over your phone to read it, then look up to catch the swerving car?

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

#152
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, as opposed to also worrying about a careless teenager flying their drone too close to an airport to get a sick camera angle of a landing plane.

Why worry about something that hasn't happened? Why not worry about a careless teenager wanting to get a sick Camera angle of the inside of your fridge? It's as valid a concern.

Normally I would agree with you, I often chide people for inventing problems to solve. But it is a little different when it isn't a hypothetical as much as an inevitable future occurrence.

As for refrigerators, I am just as worried about people trying to fly drones around my house as I am about people flying drones around planes, yes. I have it on good authority that anyone with the funds can purchase access to 3D drone-generated map of my city, my house included. A gentleman here in town who replaces windows doesn't bother to measure them anymore; he just uses the drone photos.

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

#153
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…

I use multimotors, and think the current hysteria about drones is deplorable, and that this minister's response (and indeed the whole article) is great.

That said, geofencing is not to protect planes from terrorists, it's to protect them from stupid.

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

#154
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a way to spin each propeller at 180 degree phase so they would cancel/reduce each others noise.

How difficult is it to do while adjusting each propeller's speed for steering etc?

I've only heard about for wing based uav's , not quadcopters. Maybe this is a good sign for Google's drones, which use wings, but rotate their rotors for landing.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why worry about something that hasn't happened? Why not worry about a careless teenager wanting to get a sick Camera angle of the inside of your fridge? It's as valid a concern.

Normally I would agree with you, I often chide people for inventing problems to solve. But it is a little different when it isn't a hypothetical as much as an inevitable future occurrence. As for refrigerators, I am just as worried about people trying to fly drones around my house as I am about people flying drones around planes, yes. I have it on good authority that anyone with the funds can purchase access to 3D dr…

https://www.google.com/maps/streetview/

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

#156
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually good precedent to bring up - has e.g. Google Maps or more infamously, Apple Maps, ever been held liable for bad directions? I believe it's still seen as the end user's responsibility to obey the laws, especially when the safeguards fail.

A friend recently (several months ago) was fined because he trusted Google Maps to be accurate and drove into an otherwise unmarked (by the route he took into it) wilderness protection area. He got the minimal fine because he demonstrated that he'd tried to obey the law (showed that Google Maps marked the areas, but marked them incorrectly), but he was still fined.

Did he contest that fine in court? If not, why is this story relevant?

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend recently (several months ago) was fined because he trusted Google Maps to be accurate and drove into an otherwise unmarked (by the route he took into it) wilderness protection area. He got the minimal fine because he demonstrated that he'd tried to obey the law (showed that Google Maps marked the areas, but marked them incorrectly), but he was still fined.

Did he contest that fine in court? If not, why is this story relevant?

He did. Because it's a demonstration of how the court system (at least in the US) generally works. Pleading ignorance of the law when violating it, even when you use tools that are supposed to prevent that violation, doesn't always work. Anyone using these systems should still be aware of what they're doing and where they're allowed to go and should consider them mitigators, at best, when they get caught in violation of air space.

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

#158

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.

Perhaps, but with the recent move to classify straight up toys as "drones", those things probably aren't going to have such intelligence built in. There would be value in being able to pull up my phone and find out "Yes, there are no arbitrary restrictions on flying right here".

It's already there, i have either my phone or tablet out when i use my 3DR Solo (it displays the video feed). One screen of the app which displays the video feed, is airspace restrictions on a map of the current area (although you can pan and zoom around the world in order to plan future flights too).

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone got killed recently because Waze took them to a same-named street but in a bad neighborhood in Brazil

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.

Yeah, God forbid someone touches a radio dial while they're driving or anything. Someone could get killed!

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn on and off each individual notification. And it also has voice commands built in to control the app. You don't even need the phone's screen on. It can be in your pocket while driving. And it is relevant to you no matter what lane you are in. If there is a car on the shoulder, someone in the right lane could be not paying attention, and swerve into you to avoid that car. Though you should be always on hig…

Wouldn't it be safer to pay attention to the road and notice someone swerving your way than to get an alert, look over your phone to read it, then look up to catch the swerving car?

What if the vehicle is around the next bend?

Are you actually arguing that drivers should have less information available to them?

Disclaimer: I use Waze and think it's fucking fantastic and do not understand this stupid brouhaha in this thread.

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