Posts by @thecoda

EU aviation agency publishes new drone framework. Hobbyists won't like it

Re: @Martin Gregorie

"IMO, commercially built "DJI drones" shouldn't be sold without a license and insurance. (Just like with autos) However the off the shelf, DIY quads / planes should be allowed. Reason being, the the DIY pilot usually spends a lot of time and effort in the crafts construction and thus are less likely to act like complete f@ck-tards."

Stuff and nonsense!

I don't have a fat wallet, but I *am* a keen photographer/videographer. I saved hard for a Mavic so I could get something small enough to easily transport and add arial footage to my work. I want the minimisation that comes with bulk manufacturing, the sort of camera that's hard to source as a discrete component, software + hardware that "just works", and the confidence of having a manufacturers warranty.

I generally fly it slowly for the smoothest possible footage, and on occasion would love to be able to go out of visual range - especially if I'm e.g following a river at low level.

Just because I didn't hand-build something twice the size, with an inferior camera, and which doesn't fold down smaller than a bag of sugar... you now believe that I should be forced to pay the same price of the drone again for the only currently-available license? Screw that!

Which certificate would that be then?

The only option available right now is the PfCO "Permission for Commercial Operation" license. This is obviously designed, and priced, for people doing... well... commercial operations. Think movie making, building inspection, estate agents, etc.

The price of this is about to be raised to £247, plus another £185 every year. Most places offering training and the "operational assessment" to get this qualification will add their own fees, taking it to around £1000. If you're flying something like the Mavic Pro, and a friend offers you a few quid to get some shots of her house, then you have to DOUBLE what you paid for the thing in the first place so that you can legally do so.

To put that into perspective... If you want to travel to that house in a 3 tonne lump of steel travelling at 70mph, if you pass the test first time, you'll have paid £125 + lessons with no annual repeat for the privilege and you'll potentially be bringing over 500kJ of energy to any potential collision. Even if you factor in vehicle tax, it's not hard to end up paying under £185/year.

So I'll tentatively welcome this legislation, IF it means the introduction of a certificate with sane pricing for those of us who aren't flying our drones primarily as a business venture. Something where the ratio of license cost to potential risk is the same as that for a car. Something that allows compensation up to a certain limit, where my mate can pay me £20 to check out his guttering without making me a criminal.

One-way Martian ticket: Pick passengers for Musk's first Mars pioneer squad

How About...

Michael Gove and Donald Rumsfeld?

Innocent Spaniards roasted by experimental napalm mead

I want some!

My first thought on reading this was a strong desire to taste the stuff. Seriously... where can I get it?

BT copper-cable choppers cop 16 months in the cooler

Re: Silver Linings

Shouldn't be a problem with FTTC though. Run *something* for the power to said cabinet and you still have powered copper going into each property. It's not as though you're not already running new cables at the time...

Heck, you could even use copper for just the power, it would still be a fraction of the original amount.

Skype: Nearly half of adults don't install software updates

In the case of Skype, at least, it's a long established trend that each "upgrade" will bring new popups, adverts, etc. with no way to turn them off. For a while I used to like the Mac version without the infuriating, unavoidable "today" window - until they added the infuriating, unavoidable "dial pad" that is.

The only true upgrade here is to another product that isn't Skype.

BSkyB nabs stake in telly babble app biz Zeebox

Hidden message?

"Sky said its customers will, later this year, be able to manage Sky+ recordings remotely thanks to a Zeebox-powered app. They will also be able to use their iPhones or iPads as a remote control for their Sky box."

Very interesting... The current Sky apps work by sending a "record" message to Sky's servers, which then have to send it to every box in the nation via a satellite feed (but tagged with your viewing card number). This approach looks a lot like it's going to have to run over your LAN, are Sky finally going to turn on that ethernet port for something more than downloading content?

Google pits C++ against Java, Scala, and Go

What *really* happened

The optimisations involved were all performed by humans - rewriting the code with the explicit goal of making it run faster. In the case of the two languages on the Java platform (Java and Scala), the optimisation also involved tuning GC parameters.

Interestingly, all of the changes made in the Scala code to speed it up were available to the Java code (They both compile down to the same bytecode). So what happened here is that Scala took techniques which would just be too verbose and otherwise impractical in Java, and made them more generally accessible.

Now *that's* a result.