13 ms·

When I started my first coding job, I once made the joke that "testing is hard. I'll just push the code to production and see what happens." An old, crusty engi

by madrox 8y ago

When I started my first coding job, I once made the joke that "testing is hard. I'll just push the code to production and see what happens." An old, crusty engineer just looked at me and said, "you're the kind of person that gets people killed." I feel like 99% of the engineers who comment on HN don't work in fields where their technology could kill someone if it messes up. If an error meant someone's death, you'd probably think a little harder for committing. That's why I'm not taking anyone who calls this "draconian" or derisively "risk averse" seriously. Being a safety-first industry is not a punch line. Life is stochastic, not deterministic, and the FAA exists to add as many 9s to the likelihood of success as possible. Sorry your fun is ruined, but when I fly in a plane I don't want to be worrying if some hobbyist with more money than accountability will put my life at risk because they wanted to make a cool video to put on YouTube.

AWildC182 8y ago
I agree completely. This coming from a flight software dev, instrument pilot and EAB aircraft builder: embrace the FAA and it's regulation. Don't be afraid to work with them either. If you think for a second that the UAV industry (both hobby and commercial) is going to stop at little quadcopters and 400ft, you're sorely mistaken. Not even the sky is the limit if you learn to work within the mindset that your decisions have consequences, so you very very much want to be treated as equals to manned systems. I know it sounds restrictive but manned aircraft can basically do anything and go anywhere, they just have to take certain precautions.
- adonnjohn 8y ago
  Tangential - any advice for software devs looking for entry level experience in the industry? It's a topic I'm passionate about and would love to branch into, but I started in computer science and don't have any aerospace experience.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    In short, learn C, FPGA development or both, and get used to low level computing. Pay attention in your computer architecture class!
    - adonnjohn 8y ago
      Thank you for the advice! Been out of school for about a year now, but that class was my favorite by far.
  - Jtsummers 8y ago
    Look into companies like Boeing and Airbus, then branch out into their suppliers and subcontractors. CS is all you need to get started in safety critical software (entry level positions). You’ll learn more on the job, and learn what other disciplines you should study. Working with a supplier may prove more fruitful. Depending on the size of their components, you can be more active throughout the year. Working direct for Boeing and their peers can leave you with months of downtime sometimes (especially if you end up in the maintenance end of a system’s lifecycle and not the initial development period).
    - adonnjohn 8y ago
      I appreciate the bit about looking into other firms in the supply chain, as I hadn't thought of that whatsoever. I'll start looking into how I fit entry level reqs for safety critical software roles. Thank you for the advice!
      - Jtsummers 8y ago
        I got my start in the supply chain end (safety critical systems, mostly for airliners some DoD aircraft). I moved to other related areas (though not always safety critical). I had a number of friends who went to the big companies like Boeing and Airbus and they found it either very good or very bad, not much in the middle. They either had interesting (for them) work, or were stuck in a kind of nursery waiting for things to do for months at a time, and prevented from doing anything else meaningful by various corporate policies. That is my only real hesitation with those types of companies as places for a first job in the field.
  - walterbell 8y ago
    Systemantics by John Gall is worth a look, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics
    - adonnjohn 8y ago
      Will definitely add this to my study list. Thank you for sharing!
syshum 8y ago
Explain to me how my flying a 4 pound drone at a height of 100 ft to take a photo of my home is putting someones life in danger to the point where the FAA should require me to register my activity and pass a license program? Edit: "my kid are playing in our backyard. Do I have the right of privacy?": No you do not have a Right to privacy, I can put a camera on my roof or pole and record your backyard if I wanted and there is nothing legally you could do about it Drones falling from the sky: General liability laws would apply no different than if I am mowing my lawn and a rock flys out and hits you, or if I am play yard Darts and I toss one over your fence which injures you. I can not prove it is safe: That is not how a free society works, the burden is not on me to prove my actions are safe, the burden is on YOU to prove that my actions have a more likely than not probability of causing physical harm to others or their property Other Air Traffic Hitting a Wing: Why are they below 400ft, or the less than 100 ft I would fly but still be under the FAA Regulations, My entire point is that under 100ft should not be under the FAA at all,
- Balgair 8y ago
  It's not that the drone is the problem, it's what else is up there. Just yesterday I had 2 f-16s fly over my apartment [0]. Their height, by my estimate, was about 500 ft. Could I be wrong about the height? Sure, but I could see them quite clearly and hear them very well. Since I live near an AFB, I'm used to low bypass jets overhead. But yesterday was different, they were easily 5x as low as they should have been. Heck, they commonly fly low over games and that's as good a place to fly a drone as ever. The risk of an f-16 coming down near a stadium event is very very low, yes, but not a chance worth taking. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/9m8b6s/what_was_with_the_f16_or_f35_flyover_a_few/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/9m8b6s/what_was_wit...
  - leetcrew 8y ago
    if 2 f-16s actually flew 500 ft over your house there was almost certainly a temporary flight restriction over the area, which is very easy to look up. it's also already illegal to fly anything anywhere near a large stadium during a game. the thing that frustrates me about this debate is that section 336 already had a pretty strict (and mostly reasonable, imo) set of rules for flying drones with severe penalties attached (up to $250k fine and possible jail time). idk why an informed person would call for stricter rules instead of just having the FAA enforce the ones that were already on the books.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bardworx 8y ago
Man, your comment hits home. I desperately want a drone as a toy but under the guise to check my gutters if they’re clogged. However, next to where I live is a small airfield and, at times, we have small private jets and sesnas flying next to us. What always stopped me from buying the drone was because I simply didn’t want to put myself in a position to have that one malfunction that causes the drone to soar and accidentally damage the plane. Regardless of how improbable or unlikely, I just didn’t want to be “that guy”.
- kawsper 8y ago
  Get a UK65/UR65 quadcopter, a pair of goggles and a transmitter and off you go. Or a Blade Inductrix FPV RTF kit that comes with everything, even a charger! These quads are so tiny and won't do any damage even to walls, I fly them around the house, so they won't mess up any airplane traffic!
  - dmitrygr 8y ago
    It is not your place to decide what your device will or will not damage. This is precisely why regulations on what can fly where exist. You stand to lose a $100 toy, someone might lose a life. With this asymmetry in mind, regulation simply must exist. You personally might be responsible, but not everyone is. Try to be conscious of this. These are lives at hand, not just your ability to play with flying toys.
    - kawsper 8y ago
      What are you on about? I am flying inside my own house!
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    How confident are you a 100g toy pulled through a turbofan or propeller won’t mess it up? Sure, if it stays inside your house, quite confident. I’m quite confident the only thing other than air a turbofan or aircraft propeller is designed to cope with is rain / fog / cloud. Edit to add: looks like the toys you mentioned are around 30g. I stand by my point though.
babypuncher 8y ago
When is the last time someone was killed playing with their toy quadcopter in the back yard?
- iscrewyou 8y ago
  No one probably. Because toy quadcopters don’t have range past your house’s roof. Are you missing the point of the regulations and guidelines?
  - djrogers 8y ago
    The point is that as of now there are no guidelines and regulations - which means no exceptions yet. I think everyone is hoping or assuming that little toy quads won’t count, but until we see the regulations we don’t know what qualifies as a ‘little toy’.
illuminati1911 8y ago
Yeah because obviously we just have to ruin the whole hobby or sky will fall and everyone will die. There are no other options, right? This kind of emotional platitudes aren't really valid arguments for this level of government overreach that is mostly just BS. I'm definitely for some kind of regulations like max flight altitude, _maybe_ mandatory pilot's license etc. But things like "to be operated within line of sight at all times", transponders/remote identifiers, banning kids from flying small drones is just ridiculous. I'm sure senile legislators will get exited to show some power, but for everyone else this just annoyance. "the FAA exists to add as many 9s to the likelihood of success as possible" And that's why they must be stopped. If we did everything in our societies and lives by "adding as many 9s as possible" suicide and depression statistics would probably skyrocket, since we couldn't do pretty much anything at all but just stay at our homes, never get out of bed and eat generic health food from a tube.
rqs 8y ago
What an accuracy hit. Few years ago I was watching across some YouTube video about drones. In one video, some guy was flying a hacked DJI drone to workaround the limitation so just he can fly it higher. I of course concerned about it because the altitude he have reached is well above the limit set by FAA. So I wrote a comment to ask about hes acknowledgement on those FAA rules. And what's followed was a debate that lasted almost a week. Today, you can still found that kind of videos on YouTube where people are flying hacked drones to "Break/Test the limits". I hope somebody like FAA can do something to prevent people from doing stupid things (Hack their drone so it can fly higher etc), and make the sky safer.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
> as many 9s to the likelihood of success as possible If that were the actual mission of the FAA, that would be easy to accomplish with near-infinite 9s: Stop flying entirely, ban all flying machines of all types. You'd have zero aviation incidents if there was no aviation. There are a finite number of 9s that are needed before the cost of adding more safety is detrimental to humanity. And note that I do work in a field where my work could kill someone if it messes up. I build industrial equipment, typically to ISO 13849 PLd or PLe standards - that's 7 nines of probability that there will be no dangerous failure in any given hour, which requires reliable components, fault sensing/fault tolerant safety controllers, and redundant wiring . I could make equipment I produce more safe, if that was my only goal. For example, each E-stop button has two contacts and two pairs of wires in parallel which monitor its state, and this button removes power from the machine by turning off two contactors in series. If any one of these components should fail - a contact on the E-stop gets shorted out, or a contactor gets welded closed - the system will detect this and remove energy from the system. I could, in theory, make this "more safe" with three pairs of wires and three contactors in series. But while I've had to fight hard against those who try to reduce the safety level in favor of production efficiency, I've never tried to add a third set of redundant contacts. In the end, an operator standing next to the E-stop button and supplying one of my robots outside the safety gate and light curtain means that there are 6 guys who are not using high-power hand tools to do what the robot is doing. Adding excessive 9s to this system means not that people are safer, instead there's less automation and the world is worse off. A simple registration process, knowledge test, and inexpensive transponders on RC aircraft would make the world a better place. Requiring hundreds of hours of training and certification, and adding prohibitively expensive transponders, would kill off RC aviation. I want you to fly in a plane safely. That's harder to do if your pilot didn't grow up at the model airfield.

by madrox 8y ago

AWildC182 8y ago

I agree completely. This coming from a flight software dev, instrument pilot and EAB aircraft builder: embrace the FAA and it's regulation. Don't be afraid to work with them either. If you think for a second that the UAV industry (both hobby and commercial) is going to stop at little quadcopters and 400ft, you're sorely mistaken. Not even the sky is the limit if you learn to work within the mindset that your decisions have consequences, so you very very much want to be treated as equals to manned systems. I know it sounds restrictive but manned aircraft can basically do anything and go anywhere, they just have to take certain precautions.

adonnjohn 8y ago
Tangential - any advice for software devs looking for entry level experience in the industry? It's a topic I'm passionate about and would love to branch into, but I started in computer science and don't have any aerospace experience.
- AWildC182 8y ago
  In short, learn C, FPGA development or both, and get used to low level computing. Pay attention in your computer architecture class!
  - adonnjohn 8y ago
    Thank you for the advice! Been out of school for about a year now, but that class was my favorite by far.
- Jtsummers 8y ago
  Look into companies like Boeing and Airbus, then branch out into their suppliers and subcontractors. CS is all you need to get started in safety critical software (entry level positions). You’ll learn more on the job, and learn what other disciplines you should study. Working with a supplier may prove more fruitful. Depending on the size of their components, you can be more active throughout the year. Working direct for Boeing and their peers can leave you with months of downtime sometimes (especially if you end up in the maintenance end of a system’s lifecycle and not the initial development period).
  - adonnjohn 8y ago
    I appreciate the bit about looking into other firms in the supply chain, as I hadn't thought of that whatsoever. I'll start looking into how I fit entry level reqs for safety critical software roles. Thank you for the advice!
    - Jtsummers 8y ago
      I got my start in the supply chain end (safety critical systems, mostly for airliners some DoD aircraft). I moved to other related areas (though not always safety critical). I had a number of friends who went to the big companies like Boeing and Airbus and they found it either very good or very bad, not much in the middle. They either had interesting (for them) work, or were stuck in a kind of nursery waiting for things to do for months at a time, and prevented from doing anything else meaningful by various corporate policies. That is my only real hesitation with those types of companies as places for a first job in the field.
- walterbell 8y ago
  Systemantics by John Gall is worth a look, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics
  - adonnjohn 8y ago
    Will definitely add this to my study list. Thank you for sharing!

syshum 8y ago

Explain to me how my flying a 4 pound drone at a height of 100 ft to take a photo of my home is putting someones life in danger to the point where the FAA should require me to register my activity and pass a license program? Edit: "my kid are playing in our backyard. Do I have the right of privacy?": No you do not have a Right to privacy, I can put a camera on my roof or pole and record your backyard if I wanted and there is nothing legally you could do about it Drones falling from the sky: General liability laws would apply no different than if I am mowing my lawn and a rock flys out and hits you, or if I am play yard Darts and I toss one over your fence which injures you. I can not prove it is safe: That is not how a free society works, the burden is not on me to prove my actions are safe, the burden is on YOU to prove that my actions have a more likely than not probability of causing physical harm to others or their property Other Air Traffic Hitting a Wing: Why are they below 400ft, or the less than 100 ft I would fly but still be under the FAA Regulations, My entire point is that under 100ft should not be under the FAA at all,

Balgair 8y ago
It's not that the drone is the problem, it's what else is up there. Just yesterday I had 2 f-16s fly over my apartment [0]. Their height, by my estimate, was about 500 ft. Could I be wrong about the height? Sure, but I could see them quite clearly and hear them very well. Since I live near an AFB, I'm used to low bypass jets overhead. But yesterday was different, they were easily 5x as low as they should have been. Heck, they commonly fly low over games and that's as good a place to fly a drone as ever. The risk of an f-16 coming down near a stadium event is very very low, yes, but not a chance worth taking. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/9m8b6s/what_was_with_the_f16_or_f35_flyover_a_few/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Denver/comments/9m8b6s/what_was_wit...
- leetcrew 8y ago
  if 2 f-16s actually flew 500 ft over your house there was almost certainly a temporary flight restriction over the area, which is very easy to look up. it's also already illegal to fly anything anywhere near a large stadium during a game. the thing that frustrates me about this debate is that section 336 already had a pretty strict (and mostly reasonable, imo) set of rules for flying drones with severe penalties attached (up to $250k fine and possible jail time). idk why an informed person would call for stricter rules instead of just having the FAA enforce the ones that were already on the books.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bardworx 8y ago

Man, your comment hits home. I desperately want a drone as a toy but under the guise to check my gutters if they’re clogged. However, next to where I live is a small airfield and, at times, we have small private jets and sesnas flying next to us. What always stopped me from buying the drone was because I simply didn’t want to put myself in a position to have that one malfunction that causes the drone to soar and accidentally damage the plane. Regardless of how improbable or unlikely, I just didn’t want to be “that guy”.

kawsper 8y ago
Get a UK65/UR65 quadcopter, a pair of goggles and a transmitter and off you go. Or a Blade Inductrix FPV RTF kit that comes with everything, even a charger! These quads are so tiny and won't do any damage even to walls, I fly them around the house, so they won't mess up any airplane traffic!
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  It is not your place to decide what your device will or will not damage. This is precisely why regulations on what can fly where exist. You stand to lose a $100 toy, someone might lose a life. With this asymmetry in mind, regulation simply must exist. You personally might be responsible, but not everyone is. Try to be conscious of this. These are lives at hand, not just your ability to play with flying toys.
  - kawsper 8y ago
    What are you on about? I am flying inside my own house!
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  How confident are you a 100g toy pulled through a turbofan or propeller won’t mess it up? Sure, if it stays inside your house, quite confident. I’m quite confident the only thing other than air a turbofan or aircraft propeller is designed to cope with is rain / fog / cloud. Edit to add: looks like the toys you mentioned are around 30g. I stand by my point though.

babypuncher 8y ago

When is the last time someone was killed playing with their toy quadcopter in the back yard?

iscrewyou 8y ago
No one probably. Because toy quadcopters don’t have range past your house’s roof. Are you missing the point of the regulations and guidelines?
- djrogers 8y ago
  The point is that as of now there are no guidelines and regulations - which means no exceptions yet. I think everyone is hoping or assuming that little toy quads won’t count, but until we see the regulations we don’t know what qualifies as a ‘little toy’.

illuminati1911 8y ago

Yeah because obviously we just have to ruin the whole hobby or sky will fall and everyone will die. There are no other options, right? This kind of emotional platitudes aren't really valid arguments for this level of government overreach that is mostly just BS. I'm definitely for some kind of regulations like max flight altitude, _maybe_ mandatory pilot's license etc. But things like "to be operated within line of sight at all times", transponders/remote identifiers, banning kids from flying small drones is just ridiculous. I'm sure senile legislators will get exited to show some power, but for everyone else this just annoyance. "the FAA exists to add as many 9s to the likelihood of success as possible" And that's why they must be stopped. If we did everything in our societies and lives by "adding as many 9s as possible" suicide and depression statistics would probably skyrocket, since we couldn't do pretty much anything at all but just stay at our homes, never get out of bed and eat generic health food from a tube.

rqs 8y ago

What an accuracy hit. Few years ago I was watching across some YouTube video about drones. In one video, some guy was flying a hacked DJI drone to workaround the limitation so just he can fly it higher. I of course concerned about it because the altitude he have reached is well above the limit set by FAA. So I wrote a comment to ask about hes acknowledgement on those FAA rules. And what's followed was a debate that lasted almost a week. Today, you can still found that kind of videos on YouTube where people are flying hacked drones to "Break/Test the limits". I hope somebody like FAA can do something to prevent people from doing stupid things (Hack their drone so it can fly higher etc), and make the sky safer.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

> as many 9s to the likelihood of success as possible If that were the actual mission of the FAA, that would be easy to accomplish with near-infinite 9s: Stop flying entirely, ban all flying machines of all types. You'd have zero aviation incidents if there was no aviation. There are a finite number of 9s that are needed before the cost of adding more safety is detrimental to humanity. And note that I do work in a field where my work could kill someone if it messes up. I build industrial equipment, typically to ISO 13849 PLd or PLe standards - that's 7 nines of probability that there will be no dangerous failure in any given hour, which requires reliable components, fault sensing/fault tolerant safety controllers, and redundant wiring . I could make equipment I produce more safe, if that was my only goal. For example, each E-stop button has two contacts and two pairs of wires in parallel which monitor its state, and this button removes power from the machine by turning off two contactors in series. If any one of these components should fail - a contact on the E-stop gets shorted out, or a contactor gets welded closed - the system will detect this and remove energy from the system. I could, in theory, make this "more safe" with three pairs of wires and three contactors in series. But while I've had to fight hard against those who try to reduce the safety level in favor of production efficiency, I've never tried to add a third set of redundant contacts. In the end, an operator standing next to the E-stop button and supplying one of my robots outside the safety gate and light curtain means that there are 6 guys who are not using high-power hand tools to do what the robot is doing. Adding excessive 9s to this system means not that people are safer, instead there's less automation and the world is worse off. A simple registration process, knowledge test, and inexpensive transponders on RC aircraft would make the world a better place. Requiring hundreds of hours of training and certification, and adding prohibitively expensive transponders, would kill off RC aviation. I want you to fly in a plane safely. That's harder to do if your pilot didn't grow up at the model airfield.