It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Responsibly Fly a Drone - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/it-shouldnt-be-this-hard-to-responsibly-fly-a-drone <comment><USER2> I don't know. As a pilot of a small plane, I'd say you need to spend at least an hour to plan a flight, if not more. Familiarise yourself with departure and arrival airport and alternates, the route, weather and airspace along the route (you do not want to wander into Class B or or restricted airspace by accident), TFRs (temporary flight restrictions), NOTAMs (notices to airmen), and more. If you're very familiar with a route, it might be less, and if it's a totally new area/route for you, it might be more.

If you pilot a plane, and you make a mistake, your own life is on the line.

When you fly a drone, you still constitute a danger to other aircraft and the people in it, or people on the ground. Why should you be subject to fewer rules, just because _you_ are not aboard the aircraft, and thus not at risk?

Imagine remote controlled cars on the road. Should we allow some drunk kids without license on their computer at home to control cars on the road (and endanger everyone else), just because _they_ are not in danger? Of course not.

So, my sympathy for people clamouring for less restricted drone flights is limited. Having said that, there are tools that facilitate planning a flight (in a safe and lawful manner), and having something similar for drones would obviously be great.

<comment><USER3> > When you fly a drone, you still constitute a danger to other aircraft and > the people in it, or people on the ground. Why should you be subject to > fewer rules, just because you are not aboard the aircraft, and thus not at > risk?

Because a drone is a lot smaller and thus constitutes a heavily reduced risk.

> Imagine remote controlled cars on the road. Should we allow some drunk kids > without license on their computer at home to control cars on the road (and > endanger everyone else), just because they are not in danger? Of course not.

So, to borrow your imagery here: A bicycle is a lot less risky to traffic and people than a car is and thus you are allow to drive it without a license and punishments for violations are in general lower than for cars.

<comment><USER4> You can ride a bike without a license but you still have to follow the rules of the road. Same for a drone. You don't need a license but you have to follow the rules of the air.

<comment><USER5> Yup, and there are reasonable rules for drones (such as an FAA regulated flight ceiling of 400ft and you can't fly within 5 miles of an airport* ). Following those rules is fairly simple, and at least DJI's app makes an attempt to let you know when something is amiss.

Follow those rules and you're riding the bike path, not mixing in with major air traffic. Hence why flying a drone is nothing like flying an airplane.

* for certain definitions of airport

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I decided today to look into what I need to do to legally fly my drone in Canada. I've owned it over a year, but since new regulations came in I've been afraid to use it in case it was done incorrectly. What I've learned so far is that in order to legally fly my drone, I must:

1\. Register the drone online for $5 (done, took 2 minutes).

2\. Take an exam. They won't tell me what's going to be on the exam, but instead recommend I go to one of a long list of "drone schools" who have 'self declared' that they can teach what will be on the exam. The exam is $10, but who knows what these schools will charge or if they're even reputable.

3\. Not be within 5 miles of most airports, or 1-3 miles from most helipads. (Didn't we convert to metric before I was born?). At least they've made a helpful tool with that [https://nrc.canada.ca/en/drone- tool/](https://nrc.canada.ca/en/drone-tool/). The tool also helpfully shows that oh right, most lakes are used for sea-planes to take off and land so avoid those too.

4\. Never fly within 100 ft (30m) horizontally of any 'bystander', ie: they aren't with me flying the drone.

What this all boils down to is that there's no reason to own a drone anymore unless you own a very large property far from any populated areas. There is no place less than a 20-30 minute drive away from my home that I can even legally fly it. Even then, any park or place I might legally go to without trespassing will have too many people to be more than 30m from anyone else. Even the less- populated parks and recreation areas- how do I even tell if there's someone 29m away from me through a forest or behind something?

All the while: for what benefit? Who has been seriously injured in Canada by drone accidents?

<comment><USER7> 1/2: ensure drone operators are familiar with the other rules. imo licensing should be required to purchase a drone with much stronger punishments against unlicensed operators, otherwise idiot operators will result in further regulations on use.

3\. obviously necessary

4\. Drones are a public nuisance. The sound, having a dot just floating in view, zipping around - it's annoying and even scary to bystanders.

I own and fly several drones, but I was relieved when America started banning drones from wilderness areas, national parks, and many state/city parks. The serenity of those parks is far more valuable than private drone photography / selfies.

<comment><USER8> > 3\. obviously necessary

One could argue that drones should be allowed to get right up next to helipads, lat/lon-wise, as long as they stay a safe distance away from the helipad _altitude-wise_.

There are helipads on top of buildings. If the helipad is at ~1500ft, and my drone never exceeds 300ft, then it's not endangering the helicopters, even if it's right next to the building with the helipad on it.

But instead, because of the way the law is phrased, if there's a helipad on top of a building in downtown, now I'm not able to film anywhere in downtown.

(This same argument _could_ apply to airfields, but airfields "above" neighbouring geography are pretty rare. I guess you could be filming against the cliff adjoining Lukla Airport in Nepal?)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure it's feasible for police to enforce no-fly zones in 3D space. No way is someone from the ground going to be able to tell the difference between 275 feet and 325 feet.

<comment><USER10> The US already uses 3D airspace: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_(United_State...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_\(United_States\))

The issue is the distance reserved is conservative so people slightly encroaching don't instantly cause problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a very hard time taking most of the drone pilot complaining seriously. RC aircraft have been around for ages and subject to nearly all of the same regulations as modern drones.

The problem I see is drone manufactures marketed their products such that "they're just another toy". It's led to drone operators acting like they're entitled to fly wherever they want. Combine that with pressure to capture an incredible shot for Insta/Pinterest/etc, and you get people that have completely disregarded for long standing rules designed to keep people safe.

The reality is drones are able to operate in vastly more areas than RC aircraft have in the past. Clearance from bystanders/structures, height restrictions, airport proximity, etc have all been things RC operators have dealt with for ages. Problem is people don't just want to fly a drone, they want to operate them in dangerous manners and in places they really shouldn't.

<comment><USER12> The marketing point reminds me of my disdain for Rugged Radios, who flagrantly markets their radios without any hint that licensing is required. They won't even indicate which bands are used by their radios, much less warn people that licenses are necessary.

Yes, people should be aware of their obligations, but the companies selling the products bear some of the responsibility for educating the customers, and absolutely should not be free to actively hide that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I fly recreationally with a Spark. There is a class B airport and a few helipads in my vicinity (urban city) and a large national park not far away. As long as there isn't a TFR, rescue, or police operation not going in the immediate vicinity it's not too difficult to let the ATC know you are flying. And if you use KittyHawk or AirMap you can submit a flightplan within the app.

Launching is a different matter and the author is right. You can certainly fly in a lot of places but touching the ground can be tough. Public parks can be difficult and depends on the whim of whoever is on duty. One park I flew out for months then one day a ranger tells me there is no flying there. Nothing is posted and when I go to challenge this imaginary rule it only made the ranger angry. Now I fly from public easements: sidewalks, river fronts, jetties, high tide lines. There appears to be no central authority. And the people who would try and chase you off don't think they have authority there (lots of waterfront is Corp of engineering)

</comment><comment><USER14> Summary: The FAA's B4UFLY app only tells you whether you can _fly_ a drone somewhere. It doesn't tell you whether you can _take off, operate, and land_ from there because that is up to the property owner (whether private or government owned).

<comment><USER15> Extended summary: Except over national parks. Over national parks you are allowed to fly, but not take off, operate, or land, and the FAA's app chooses to say you can't fly.

<comment><USER16> What's the difference between flying and operating? If the drone is over a national park, isn't it "operating" over it?

If you're saying it's permissible to stand outside the park and fly the drone in that sounds like the worst kind of hairsplitting to me and totally goes against the spirit of the rule.

As the purpose of the regulation is due to "this new use has the potential to cause unacceptable impacts such as harming visitors, interfering with rescue operations, causing excessive noise, impacting viewsheds, and disturbing wildlife."

It seems like _flying_ is what's discouraged.

[https://www.nps.gov/policy/PolMemos/PM_14-05.htm](https://www.nps.gov/policy/PolMemos/PM_14-05.htm)

<comment><USER15> > If you're saying it's permissible to stand outside the park and fly the > drone in ...

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They _want_ to ban flying over the park, but they don't have the legal power to do so. So instead they banned a bunch of other things (launching, landing, operating) to make flying over the park as inconvenient as possible.

The hairsplitting that goes totally against the spirit of the rule, in my opinion, is not the hair splitting that lets you continue to fly over the park, but the hairsplitting that let them pass this regulation in the first place.

<comment><USER16> I'd imagine the NPS has a better understanding of the parks than people who like drones. I'm glad they're making it as inconvenient as possible and hope they become empowered to ban drones completely from the parks.

<comment><USER15> I have no opinion of whether or not drones should be banned over national parks, and am happy to defer to them on the topic.

We live in a democracy governed by the rule of law though. I'm strongly against attempts to work around the rule of law by government agencies even if I think the outcome is somewhat positive.

In this case that means in order to ban drones flying over national parks they either need to convince the legislative branch to grant them the power to do so, or if the FAA has already been granted such power they need to convince the FAA to pass such regulations. What they shouldn't be doing (in my opinion) is work arounds like this trying to seize authority that the legislature has not granted them. (I acknowledge but disagree with an argument that this is not a workaround/splitting hairs but instead a legitimate use of their granted power)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a solution:

Congress should pass a law that says state and local jurisdictions must register their anti-drone laws with the FAA in a formal way by January 1, 20XX otherwise they are legally unenforceable.

Then there's a guarantee that what the app gives is valid information, and it's incumbent on local governments to make sure of that, and drone users aren't liable if they don't.

<comment><USER17> Does Congress have the power to do this? Genuine question. What enumerated power would this fall under?

<comment><USER12> Congress gets away with a lot in the name of interstate commerce and the general welfare, but I think the best they could do in this instance is threaten to withhold federal funds in the absence of such registration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have first hand experience with this as well. Trying to figure out where to fly a drone is nearly impossible and just makes you want to fly anyway.

<comment><USER19> If you are having trouble with Airspace issues, like here in San Diego, you can get automated LAANC approval for temporary operations using Kittyhawk. This now works for recreational operators as well. If it is confusing local rules, then I totally understand....

<comment><USER20> LAANC gets you approval (or not) from the local Air Traffic Control of the Airspace you're trying to fly in (through the FAA). It does not do anything for all the non FAA-regulated areas, which is essentially what the article centered around.

(I work for Skyward, who were the first USS that implemented LAANC.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article uses three different apps to determine if it's OK to fly a drone in a particular area. When all three said he was good he then did extensive google searches to find things as random as press releases where someone is quoted as saying no drones allowed.

If you used this level of due diligence on whether it's permissible to do anything, you'd find you're allowed to do nothing.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a shame you can't land or take off from a national park.

Rules and advises about using it would be better than the current prohibition.

I understand no one wants ten jerks flying their loud drones during summer time at Yosemite's most crowded areas... but this ignores the fact that you can drive 1h inside the park and find a place no one will be bothered.

Regarding dealing with wild life, etc. the best thing would be advises on how to deal with such an encounter. You can fly a small plane near a whale, and no one will complain... but try to fly a small drone 100m away, and suddenly, you'll be shamed for scaring the huge mammal.

<comment><USER23> NOAA prohibits low altitude flights over marine sanctuaries in order to protect whales and other animals.

[https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/management/permits/aircraft.htm...](https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/management/permits/aircraft.html)

<comment><USER24> Well that's silly. A 1kg drone does nothing compared to Navy active sonar.

edit - Not sure about the downvoters here, it's an established fact. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-military- son...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-military-sonar-kill/)

<comment><USER25> Whataboutism is rarely if ever a valid response.

<comment><USER26> when you compare two activities with roughly equal harm, whataboutism is unproductive. when you compare against an activity that causes orders of magnitude greater harm, it starts to be a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think that 'responsibly' is the correct term to use here. Legally, perhaps.

The distinction is huge. Consider 'responsible drug use'. Is a 20 year old in a bar being irresponsible because they're in the US and not the UK?

(ok, they probably are, but in a different way entirely...)

</comment><comment> lachlan-sneff No wonder people break the rules when they're almost impossible to actually find.

<comment> mark-r Sounds like an opportunity for someone.

<comment><USER28> [https://www.foreflight.com/](https://www.foreflight.com/)

An early iOS success story, founded in 2007, and recently acquired by Boeing. They are the dominant software company in this niche, and are well positioned to add a "UAS tier" subscription in the future.

<comment><USER20> Companies focused on traditional aviation _could_ have jumped into the drone market, but somehow they haven't as much, so that it's now growing its own, specialized players, such as Kittyhawk, Skyward (which happens to be my employer) and many others.

By the way, "UAS" is an unnecessarily gendered, self-important term that often doesn't even cover the subject. "Drone" has none of these problems, and it's what people "get".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wherein the author discovers we have a federal system of government with diffuse responsibilities such that no one group has any clue what the other groups are doing.

</comment><comment><USER30> So, long story short, run the app and then blame the FAA for a myriad bullshit rules 5 levels deep?

In reality perhaps what we really need is a queryable API for state and local laws? I know DC has their primary legal codex as a GitHub repo. Surely they could provide links where a state law or fed law is modified ?

With this many laws, and bureaucracy creating laws within laws with no oversight, how can we mere humans be expected to follow said laws?

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know, maybe the app is different, but if you go to:

[https://kittyhawk.io/b4ufly/](https://kittyhawk.io/b4ufly/)

with a browser this is pretty clear:

>State and Local Drone Rules

>B4UFLY shows airspace rules provided by FAA data sources.

>B4UFLY does not include local rules which may affect your planned operation – including your ability to land and take off your aircraft from certain areas. >While the FAA is the sole regulator of the National Airspace System and governs aircraft operations once airborne, entities such as cities, states, parks, and private landowners may regulate your ability to land and take off your aircraft from certain locations. Please make yourself aware of any local rules prior to your planned operation.

So, I understand the frustration in not having a definite, single, authoritative source, but the critique about the tool being deceiving appears excessive.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is for sure going to be unpopular, but folks here need to hear it:

The reason for the byzantine complexity about drone regulation isn't that some Big Government is injecting its ham-fisted regulatory appendages into a problem that it doesn't understand.

It's that, for the most part, _no one wants your drones in the air at all_. People don't like these things. They're noisy. They're scary. Their operators tend to be pushy jerks more often than not. They just aren't what a median voter wants to see on a nice sunny afternoon in the park or trail or whatever. And those voters governments, at all levels, are responding to that desire.

Basically: drone operators are the mid-life-nerd-crisis version of skate punks. No one wants them hanging around either, and skateboarding regulation is at least as complicated as drone rules.

<comment><USER33> So basically, NIMBY.

<comment><USER34> Yes, exactly. Even people that like drones don't want a drone hanging out over their back yard.

<comment><USER35> I'm also guessing a large population of drone owners first reaction to seeing someone else flying one was: They're going to lose that thing and it's going to junk up the forest.

After buying the done: Let's go fly this in the forest!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a tricky one; maintaining people's safety/ privacy while giving drone pilots 'freedom' is quite a balance. For instance, in the UK you must maintain a physical line of sight with the drone at all times, this makes flying winged craft virtually pointless.

Right now the geo-fencing of where you can fly is very rigid, with no provisions for altitude and distance, this could be improved to include glide- paths near airports for instance. It could also be tiered depending on the pilot's qualifications (similar to scuba diving) and if the drone is fitted with a transponder, or if they have submitted a flight plan. With these, there's no reason a drone pilot can't have similar freedom as a helicopter pilot.

I think most of these problems stem from technology being ahead of legislation, as always.

<comment><USER37> > _in the UK you must maintain a physical line of sight with the drone at all > times, this makes flying winged craft virtually pointless._

Why do you say that? I've flown line-of-sight fixed wing RC airplanes before and it was loads of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It would be a lot easier if the law clearly spelled out who owns the air, and if there was some way to push back on the FAA's unilateral decision making processes. Below this altitude, you own it. Above this altitude, government owns it. Is it OK for Amazon to make a drone superhighway 10 feet above my house?

In our state, even the governor has tried to get the FAA to stop routing jumbo jets so that they're causing noise problems several miles from the airport to no avail. Jets regularly pass by at 2000 feet or so even though the airport is several miles away. They didn't used to do this.

When a plane or drone flies over my house at low altitude, can I charge them a toll? How high up do I own? The FAA seems to assume I own nothing at all an inch above my land.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yeah, it all depends. I certainly don't want people buzzing me with their drone when I'm out enjoying nature with my kids. As a result, when I take my drone out, I am very certain to be far from others, and not to bug them. By default, in our state, drones are not permitted in any state park, however I have flown in a state park in our state by getting permission two times (one told me no the first time, then said ok when I asked if they could make an exception since I'm FAA certified, fly very responsibly, etc).

There seems to be a need for an I'm-not-a-douche-bag certification that can be used to make exceptions for folks like myself. I try hard not just to be responsible, but also not be a douche bag with my drone.

</comment><comment><USER40> It seems like the only solution will be for the FAA to flex it's regulatory muscle on this, and become the sole authority on where you can fly a drone. Much like the FCC did with small satellite dish prohibitions. [https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/installing-consumer- own...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/installing-consumer-owned- antennas-and-satellite-dishes)

<comment><USER41> > It seems like the only solution will be for the FAA to flex it's regulatory > muscle on this, and become the sole authority on where you can fly a drone.

Or prohibit the FAA to make such many confusing rules, i.e. flex the regulatory muscle on what the FAA is allowed to do.

<comment><USER40> The FAA provides an app that tells you if the airspace above you is legal to fly in, and they even help you file flight plans with ATC if it's required.

It's all the other parts of the government that tack on confusing rules, in an inconsistent and confusing manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > At the absolute minimum, the B4UFLY app should not tell users that they're > "good to go" unless they are flying from an area where drone use is > explicitly permitted, like national forests.

Even then... I thought I saw a sign asking people not to do that during wildfires so as not to interfere with firefighting operations. Do these things make it into some kind of temporary no-fly zone for drones?

</comment><comment><USER43> Airmap app has been mentioned here and I use it for every flight. For my area, Sydney, it covers many local regulations as well as the usual air restricted areas such as airports. It also let's you submit flight plans which before available to authorities.

It would be great if the no fly zones could be uploaded to the drone itself so it would simply refuse to take off in those areas for instance.

<comment><USER44> > It would be great if the no fly zones could be uploaded to the drone itself > so it would simply refuse to take off in those areas for instance.

DJI drones won't fly in no-fly zones.

</comment></comment><comment> lota-putty OT: Why don't most quad-copters/toy-drones come with blade protection that also duct* air flow for better thrust?

* tighter clearances

[https://img.eachine.com/eachine/products/original/201707/149...](https://img.eachine.com/eachine/products/original/201707/1499137982_24.jpg)

<comment><USER45> Because during forward flight the inlet of the duct leads to turbulence on and shadowing of the blades, drastically reducing their efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yeah, it'd be fun to have a drone, but not sure there's anywhere in Chicago I can legally fly it. Probably need a "drone park" like we have skate parks...

</comment><comment><USER47> Try Spain, the rules here are so ambiguous and bad written that no one knows if there is indeed any place in the country where you can fly drones

<comment><USER48> Unless somehow you are part of the state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> In sum: FAA's B4UFLY app database of prohibited sites is incomplete.

</comment><comment><USER50> All this fight against drones is purely TSA level fearmongering and security theatre.</comment>


Systemd-resolved is broken - <AUTHOR> http://edgeofsanity.net/rant/2017/12/20/systemd-resolved-is-broken.html <comment><USER2> This Hacker News discussion from 3 months ago explains why there is no such single thing as "The Old Behaviour".

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228940)

It also explains that "The New Behaviour" has some roots in RFC 1035, which discusses keeping state about which servers are responsive in section 7.2.

<comment><USER3> That is far from the consensus in the thread you quoted.

Some choice quotes:

> SystemD is following a standard, while people are relying on an > implementation. One that has been stable for a long time and has become a > de-facto standard. Think of e.g. memcpy on BSD - even though the standard > says memcpy between overlapped regions is not defined, the implementation > does memmove in that case, because that's what people expect to happen. If > you're replacing a system that has historically provided guarantees above > and beyond those given by a bespoke standard, you should emulate them, or > you'll cause users a lot of pain.

> SystemD devs have chosen to inflict pain on their users, hence the users are > not happy.

And

> Using each server in order is the expected behavior. From resolv.conf(5)

        nameserver Name server IP address
            Internet address of a name server that the resolver
            should query [...]. If there are multiple servers,
            the resolver library queries them in the order listed.
            [...] (The algorithm used is to try a name server, and
            if the query times out, try the next, until out of
            name servers, then repeat trying all the name servers
            until a maximum number of retries are made.)

<comment><USER2> I said that it was explained there. That you can also find people who get things _wrong_ only reinforces my point about this being a common misunderstanding of the DNS. All of those not-very-choice-at-all quotes were debunked in that discussion, including the bunkum that this is a systemd thing, disproven by the fact that these sorts of assertions had to be debunked years before systemd was even invented.

<comment><USER3> If by "it was explained there" you mean "there was a discussion there and some people agree with me", then sure "it was explained there". In fact, neither of those quotes were debunked, the only _attempt_ to debunk them is based on the idea that there were two revolvers before systemd-resolved, and only one of them held this behavior. That is a really silly arguments because the main complaint is that systemd-resolved is being used as a drop in replacement that doesn't obey the defacto spec established by its predecessor.

The irony here is that there are real arguments for changing the behavior (and real arguments against it), but you are ignoring them to instead insist that any complaints are "debunked" when they clearly aren't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Launch - <AUTHOR> http://areallybadidea.com/launch

<comment><USER2> Planned 72-84 hour dev weeks? I don't want to throw stones here because everyone has ended up in an impossible situation at some point, but I'd still prefer to hear some owning up to it being a management failure. If for no other reason than to not give the impression to up and coming CEO/CTO/Dev Managers that crunching to that degree is a normal part of software development.

Not a dis, just an observation.

<comment><USER3> You are right; the timeline we were up against was extremely tight because of external deadlines. Crunching to this degree runs an extremely high risk of burn out and is not normal, and I don't believe it is something that should be done unless you are in a do or die situation. I do think it was a management failure that we didn't plan / project manage better, but we're still relatively new to mobile app development.

If we'd had perfect knowledge of what we were going to build in the beginning, we could have cut a lot of time off customer development / exploratory phase of the product development, but I've never realistically heard of that before for a new product.

<comment><USER4> What made launching at SXSW a "do or die" situation? Sure, it's free publicity, but is that worth burnout and product that was rushed out the door?

I wish you guys all the best, but I wonder if you'll look back at this in a year and think that maybe you should have just taken another month or two to build 1.0.

<comment><USER5> Pride. Sounds to me like everyone knew what they were signing up for and fighting to make the accomplishment goes a long way in building the group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a drop-dead simple consumer experience, you're overly positioned for the tech market. Your average consumer doesn't care that it's social- they care that their 3GS can actually record video and put it on their facebook wall. You should be communicating that better on your site, in your name, and in your PR....

There are going to be a million social applications launching at SXSW. You have a head start, so I hope you're buying downloads to get ranked in the store and capitalize on your momentum. What premium features do you guys have in the works?

</comment><comment><USER7> This is the kind of inspiration I come to Hacker News to find. Fantastic work!

<comment><USER8> I was not going to read the article but I decided to read after I saw this comment.

I read entire article to understand understood that the comment was sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two really good (and popular) blog posts on HN by Justin.tv coders in one day. Pretty interesting PR strategy to humanize SocialCam from the bottom up as they ignite the engines for SXSW.

<comment><USER10> The other referenced blog post: <http://abstractnonsense.com/life-at-a- startup/> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2302214>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats. You guys deserve some good sleep! Just went through the same iPhone app submission process as SocialCam did. And we were not that lucky, 1 rejection and 19 anxious days before approval for our 1.0.

</comment><comment><USER12> So what does this offer that my built-in client for YouTube doesn't offer?

<comment><USER3> Great question; obviously we've thought a lot about it:

1) First, it shows you videos of your friends. When we looked at how we used videos we realized we didn't go to Youtube to find videos our real life friends had taken.

2) Second, we let you easily post video to Facebook or Twitter. You can do this from your Youtube client on the phone (if you have Android) but it is hardly a streamlined process.

3) We optimize the process of getting video off your phone. Youtube is a fairly terrible experience in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feel like my life for the last 4 months. 2 more to go...

</comment><comment><USER14> Great story. I was looking forward to trying socialcam out, but no Facebook account. :(

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats!</comment>


White house task force recommends curbing NSA surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25439544

<comment><USER2> This has NSA in the title, how could it possibly not be on the front page?

Edit: Anyways, I'm on to page 154 by now. Seems well-thought out to me about the need to respect civil liberties, utilizing surveillance only when _actually beneficial_ and not just 'nice to have'.</comment>


The first 15″ laptop designed to protect your digital life - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/products/librem-15/ <comment><USER2> I bought a Purism laptop last year for around $3,000 USD. It is ok.

Purism had a bizarre falling out with their former CTO. I am inclined to believe the CTO [1].

The documentation is basically non-existent. There is no end to end hardware tear down, at least a fully complete one, which I found kind of shocking. The special privacy first operating system is a very lightly modified Ubuntu OS. System76's popOS, almost a clone itself of Ubuntu, is probably more customized.

The manufacturing seemed shoddy, although not terrible. Just a lot of air- space when opening the thing and pieces jiggle around a little too much.

The USB keys they send you are awesome (micro usb, usb c, and usb A in the same key!) and I wish more vendors did the PGP smart card setup they do.

In general the German open source movement has grown...strange...the last two years. Recently I was shown that one of the main contributors to the a small but important part of the Linux library that handles multimode to Usb devices...runs an overpopulation Institute that reminds me of the bad guy from the James Bond movie Moonraker [2]. They also added a "HuaweiAltModeGlobal" which causes no end of trouble for anyone in the networking field who commonly uses say tcpdump and USB router sticks.

[1] - [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan- Todoric-Interview)

[2] - [https://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/](https://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/)

<comment><USER3> > They also added a "HuaweiAltModeGlobal" which causes no end of trouble for > anyone in the networking field who commonly uses say tcpdump and USB router > sticks.

I'm not familiar with this. Could you explain what this means? I couldn't find anything on it besides a Reddit post which wasn't very elucidating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I respect what Purism are doing, but I really wish they wouldn't resort to this sort of hyperbole to sell their computers:

> All other laptops use hardware chips coupled with software that can betray > you. News stories have shown how these chips can surreptitiously transmit > voice, networking, picture or video signals. Other chips are used to install > spyware, malware or viruses.

This advertising copy implies, without basis, that other computers are deliberately designed to be insecure and contain hardware that is intended to "install spyware, malware or viruses", and that their computer is completely free of any firmware vulnerabilities (or, by another reading, contains no firmware at all).

I don't think that either of these claims stands up to any real scrutiny. At best, it's a wild exaggeration of the facts that 1) computers have network hardware which can be used to transmit information, including audio and video recordings, under the command of software; 2) driver and firmware vulnerabilities exist; 3) there have been a small number of incidents where computers have shipped with a BIOS that triggered a Windows feature to automatically install software from the BIOS.

None of these are problems which Purism can claim to have _solved_ with their computer design. Hardware "kill switches" are at best a clumsy workaround -- isolating a computer from the network severely limits its utility -- and using open-source firmware is not a guarantee of safety.

Besides, if they're so proud of their hardware choices, surely they should be willing to go into some more detail about the hardware they decided on, and the reasons they made those choices?

<comment><AUTHOR> >> I don't think that either of these claims stands up to any real scrutiny.

I think they mean in particular the Intel ME. It all probably is more true than false. See

[https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel)

[https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/](https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whilst I'm really happy purism is doing what they're doing, it's always a little sad to see the handful of things that get in the way of this being a fantastic machine. Firstly, the WiFi card being 802.11n really doesn't cut it in 2020. Next, the bezels look really large. I've fallen in love with my precision 5530's tiny bezels. I really want a machine with some good I/O, made sturdily, with an AMD cpu/GPU, and free software. I don't think such a thing really exists though.

<comment><USER6> > with an AMD cpu/GPU, and free software

Last I checked the AMD story was worse than Intel. At least on Intel you can go the ME-cleaner route to disable the Management Engine backdoor. On AMD there's no equivalent for the PSP AFAIK.

AIUI Purism ships Intel laptops with both ME disabled and Coreboot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Damn, they want $1500 for a Core i7 7500U? You can get a laptop with a Ryzen 4800 HS for the same price. It's not particularly clear to me what you're getting versus a $600 computer with equivalent specs running Tails or something.

<comment><USER8> My assumption is this is related to the ability to neuter Intel Management Engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm happy they finally moved to 4K. Now, if they'd just center the keyboard and trackpad under the screen (by getting rid of the number pad), I'd be sorely tempted to buy one.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand the need for a "Purism Key" (AKA Search button). Any device I had them on I never used it. Rather do something like Spotlight/Alfred/Wox, where you can customise the hotkey.

<comment><USER11> The picture suggests this is Super_L, a key most people use all the time. Typically you use it to open some global menu or shortcuts related to your window manager.

Windows devices normally have a Windows logo printed on that key. Purism just decided to print their logo instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm on the market for a $2k 15" laptop, and would buy this one in a heartbeat -- it has looks, performance, quality -- if it had a NVidia 2070 GPU. As it is, it's fairly useless to me.

I do like the hardware switches. Nothing says "You're in control" like being able to interrupt the electricity with a physical toggle.

<comment><USER13> Having NVidia anywhere near my Linux machine is the deal-breaker for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Glad to see the prices are getting somewhat more reasonable. Configured it the same way as my XPS and the price is pretty close (apart from the processor being a generation behind, but if you're doing CPU-intensive tasks on a laptop you're doing it wrong anyway).

</comment><comment> 0-O-0 I wouldn't trust Purism with my money after Librem 5 disaster.

<comment><USER15> I would say that our current situation with "choose ios or android" is a more meaningful problem.

<comment> 0-O-0 I would love to see someone solving this problem, but I think that it will take a company with a significantly better track with transparency to do that.

BTW, Pinephone is a (significantly cheaper) option.</comment></comment></comment>


There may be no immunity against Covid-19, new Wuhan study suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3089476/there-may-be-no-immunity-against-covid-19-new-wuhan-study <comment><USER2> I found the paper they're referring to [1], and it's just trivially wrong. The authors argue on pages 9-10 that:

* Infection rates calculated from seroprevalence surveys are consistently at least 10 times higher than the number of infections confirmed through PCR tests.

* In Zhongnan Hospital, 2.88% of the workers got positive PCR diagnoses, which means we expect the true infection rate is above 25%.

* The seroprevalence survey of Zhongnan hospital showed only 4%, so the other 20% must have not developed antibodies.

But that third bullet doesn't make any sense! The 10x multiplier is an expectation based on seroprevalence surveys - a lack of antibodies doesn't actually explain the discrepancy. (To flip it in the other direction, if it's really true that only 4/25 of patients develop antibodies, NYC's 20% seroprevalence rate means 320% of the city's population has caught the virus.)

[1] [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20130252v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20130252v1.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is talking about antibodies, but mammalian immune systems have multiple layers. One of the reasons that corona virus antibodies are so rare is that mucus membranes, the innate immune system, and cell mediated immunity tend to succeed before antibodies are made. That population wide infection rates stop well short of 20% infected indicates that some form of immunity must be in play.</comment>


Lessons Learned Writing Unit Tests - <AUTHOR> https://stephenmann.io/post/lessons-learned-writing-unit-tests/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the fifth post in a 30 post marathon (writing one per day for 30 days). It's an incomplete list of lessons I learned due to unit testing. The lessons mostly have to do with how unit tests informed the design of my code, and not as much about how to write unit tests. Let me know what you think!</comment>