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Drake owns a 767 [1], and the founders of Google own one [2]. A couple members of the Saudi Arabian royal family are reported to own 777s [3]. It's not inconc

by ken 7y ago

Drake owns a 767 [1], and the founders of Google own one [2]. A couple members of the Saudi Arabian royal family are reported to own 777s [3]. It's not inconceivable that an individual could own a 787, though I can't find any reference to one yet. I think, though, that the sort of person who owns one doesn't tend to want to tinker with it. You just hire someone to fly it, and know that it's always available. The difference between owning and renting, at that level, is mostly financials. Besides, even if you own the aircraft, it's likely you don't own the engines [4], and they're kind of an important component of the overall system. Likewise, I don't know anyone who owns a car who has loaned it to a researcher to analyze it for design flaws. A couple people have done it [5], but for the vast majority of owners, you just use it normally, and if something breaks, you deal with the problem then. Airplanes are loaded with redundancies for critical systems so a lot of things have to go wrong for it to crash. [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-air-drake-rapper-unveils-new-massive-767-plane-which-could-cost-more-than-187-million/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-air-drake-rapper-unveils... [2]: https://searchengineland.com/your-guide-to-the-google-jet-12161 https://searchengineland.com/your-guide-to-the-google-jet-12... [3]: https://www.private-jet-fan.com/private-jet-owners-register.html https://www.private-jet-fan.com/private-jet-owners-register.... [4]: https://www.quora.com/Do-some-airlines-not-own-the-engines-on-their-aircraft https://www.quora.com/Do-some-airlines-not-own-the-engines-o... [5]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/22/car-hacking-just-got-real-hackers-disable-suv-on-busy-highway/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/2...

FDSGSG 7y ago
>Likewise, I don't know anyone who owns a car who has loaned it to a researcher to analyze it for design flaws Oh, tons of people! There's a whole industry around hacking cars, most of those people aren't the kind of researchers that do con talks though.
- userbinator 7y ago
  To be precise, in the culture itself it's usually called "modding" or "tuning"; but the newer parts of it, especially around modifying ECUs, does involve work closer to traditional computer hacking. (I'm an automotive enthusiast myself, although I'm more into the "old school" non-computer-controlled stuff. Mostly because it's simpler and inherently resistant to remote hackers.)

by ken 7y ago

FDSGSG 7y ago

>Likewise, I don't know anyone who owns a car who has loaned it to a researcher to analyze it for design flaws Oh, tons of people! There's a whole industry around hacking cars, most of those people aren't the kind of researchers that do con talks though.

userbinator 7y ago
To be precise, in the culture itself it's usually called "modding" or "tuning"; but the newer parts of it, especially around modifying ECUs, does involve work closer to traditional computer hacking. (I'm an automotive enthusiast myself, although I'm more into the "old school" non-computer-controlled stuff. Mostly because it's simpler and inherently resistant to remote hackers.)