7 ms·

Did their acquisition price factor in the % of people who will stop feeding because of this? It's one thing to feed a free open source project it's another to g

by dmd 4y ago

Did their acquisition price factor in the % of people who will stop feeding because of this? It's one thing to feed a free open source project it's another to give free labor to Silversmith Capital.

Kalibr 4y ago
Probably to eliminate the open source competition if anything.
- notahacker 4y ago
  afaik JetNet hasn't offered a competing service before: their focus is on business jet fleet and transaction related data (I worked for what could loosely be described as a competitor) The data has some value in supporting that core product (as an additional data feed to sell a handful of enterprise clients, to support their fleet data research and possibly to enhance their FBO/charter products). I guess part of the appeal of ADS-B Exchange is that working in business aviation, an unfiltered dataset is a lot more useful to them than a filtered one like most of the commercial providers. Still seems like a slightly odd acquisition, since they could have got the data beforehand relatively inexpensively and they'd probably get better feed coverage leaving it as an OS project and I do wonder how they'll manage privacy requests from some of their clients...
  - error503 4y ago
    Perhaps enabling them to censor the feed is one of the primary reasons for the acquisition. I can't imagine it was that expensive, considering the likes of whom might take issue with the data being public.
    - brookst 4y ago
      Perhaps, but it would be like buying a newsstand to censor a newspaper. The data is still freely available and will be distributed via another channel.
      - mikewarot 4y ago
        But will it really become available again? Or, more likely, like RSS, will this snuff it out. It's amazing how someone with a bit of capital and time can control almost anything that offends them.
      - inferiorhuman 4y ago
        That sort of irrational behavior makes me wonder if das muskrat has his paws in this. If he was willing to drop $44 billion on Twitter, this is pocket change by comparison. And he's been desperately trying to get that guy to stop tracking his jet. The data is still freely available and will be distributed via another channel. The ADS-B transmissions are still freely available but the value is in the aggregate product. In the case of ADS-B Exchange that aggregate takes a ton of work from volunteers who (if the comments here are any indication) are inclined to stop volunteering. An ADS-B receiver has a range of dozens, maybe hundreds of miles. Without that network of volunteers Joe Schmo in Santa Cruz will have no way of tuning in to that freely observable transponder in Austin.
        nocoiner 4y ago
        There’s most definitely a coordination problem to be solve to recreate that network, and I don’t mean to understate the difficulty of that at all, but I’m wondering if a (reconstituted) network of a small-ish number of volunteers could scale up to, say, 80% of the current ADSB Exchange coverage surprisingly quickly? My feeder, which cost maybe $100 all-in (pi + sdr + antenna; though the pi was much cheaper then than it is now) has full coverage of two major airports. Normal range is 200 miles (obviously dependent on altitude) and sometimes picks up plans ~250 miles away, I assume depending on relatively rare atmospheric conditions. With reasonably optimal distribution of what, a few hundred receivers, my mental math is suggesting you could cover a majority of the continental U.S. landmass and a large majority of its population and air traffic? Again, not to understand the magnitude of this. But if someone’s objective is generally to redistribute public data, or track Gulfstreams on their way to Omaha during times of financial upheaval, or poke a finger in the eye of the private jet lobby, but not to create a 99% comprehensive, monetizable data source for a sale to private equity - maybe it’s not crazy infeasible?
    - notahacker 4y ago
      The information is already publicly broadcast; nobody's paying one particular feed company big bucks to remove it from their records when most others do it simply because they ask nicely or because they don't want to upset the government. And even without the feeds, if a guy with a device somewhere near an airport decides to tweet that Elon has landed, everybody knows anyway.
mindcrime 4y ago
I mean, if I were providing one of these feeds, I'd probably shut it down and look for (or create) a new community-driven alternative.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I chose to contribute my collected ADS-B data to ADS-B Exchange rather than Flightradar24 just because ADS-B Exchange was community driven and not owned by a company. I just turned off my sharing and looking for alternatives. If anyone know of any, please share them :)
  - nerpderp82 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Operyl 4y ago
      Man, the blockchain being inserted wherever it doesn't need to be is becoming rampant on HN, isn't it? Humor me, though, how would that work and why would the cost of running a "blockchain," both in terms of money and energy wasted, be better than a simple feed aggregator?
      - nerpderp82 4y ago
        A signed append only log, distributed with webtorrent would provide provenance and distribution. This would allow for not having to have dedicated infrastructure for collection. One could also use USENET and get rid of the garbage will killfiles.
        Operyl 4y ago
        And who maintains the signing keys? It's just as centralized, with tons more complexity.. EDIT: Regardless, the point I'm making is this is just way more work for something that really doesn't need a blockchain.
wpietri 4y ago
I might feel similarly, especially given my distaste for private equity. But in the AIS (ship tracking) space, commercial versions seem to do ok. MarineTraffic runs its own blatantly commercial effort. And AIShub.net is not commercial itself, but it is run by Astra Paging, which definitely is. I run a receiver that feeds into both networks, and in both cases I look at it as a value-for-value exchange.
dgacmu 4y ago
Some are likely to, but remember that feeding is a mutual exchange - sites that you feed to generally give you a free, no ads account. I feed both ADS-B exchange and flightaware for this reason. Although I will admit that the flight aware app is more useful unless you're interested in unfiltered data. Contributing to an unfiltered source is one motivation, but it's one of several.
- jvanvleet 4y ago
  This is my situation as well. If you travel a lot, having something light Flightaware giving you more detailed information about what is really happening with your flight or airport is wonderful and starting a feed was a fun way to get more features.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I have a basic (free) Flightaware account. I can't imagine anything relevant to commercial airliner travel that I'd need that I don't get from that free account. Is there something I'm missing? (I totally get the fun aspect and it's fairly cheap to put a receiver up.)
    - dgacmu 4y ago
      the only value for me is having no ads. which is, in fact, something i value, but not at the $80/month it would take to subscribe for. But it's worth sending my feed.
    - james_pm 4y ago
      From FR24, you get two years of historical data for starters.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Lots of interesting stuff outside of commercial airliners. Flightaware (and FR24) censors (for a fee). I remember emailing a journo covering a protest to look up and observe the plane circling around. But ultimately they’re different services: Adsb is vessel focussed, while FA/FR24 are flight# focussed. Want to find out what routes your aircraft typically flies? Adsb will be the place to check. Want to see if your flight is typically on-time? FA/FR24.
sschueller 4y ago
Well I for one will stop feeding them.

by dmd 4y ago

Did their acquisition price factor in the % of people who will stop feeding because of this? It's one thing to feed a free open source project it's another to give free labor to Silversmith Capital.

Kalibr 4y ago

Probably to eliminate the open source competition if anything.

notahacker 4y ago
afaik JetNet hasn't offered a competing service before: their focus is on business jet fleet and transaction related data (I worked for what could loosely be described as a competitor) The data has some value in supporting that core product (as an additional data feed to sell a handful of enterprise clients, to support their fleet data research and possibly to enhance their FBO/charter products). I guess part of the appeal of ADS-B Exchange is that working in business aviation, an unfiltered dataset is a lot more useful to them than a filtered one like most of the commercial providers. Still seems like a slightly odd acquisition, since they could have got the data beforehand relatively inexpensively and they'd probably get better feed coverage leaving it as an OS project and I do wonder how they'll manage privacy requests from some of their clients...
- error503 4y ago
  Perhaps enabling them to censor the feed is one of the primary reasons for the acquisition. I can't imagine it was that expensive, considering the likes of whom might take issue with the data being public.
  - brookst 4y ago
    Perhaps, but it would be like buying a newsstand to censor a newspaper. The data is still freely available and will be distributed via another channel.
    - mikewarot 4y ago
      But will it really become available again? Or, more likely, like RSS, will this snuff it out. It's amazing how someone with a bit of capital and time can control almost anything that offends them.
    - inferiorhuman 4y ago
      That sort of irrational behavior makes me wonder if das muskrat has his paws in this. If he was willing to drop $44 billion on Twitter, this is pocket change by comparison. And he's been desperately trying to get that guy to stop tracking his jet. The data is still freely available and will be distributed via another channel. The ADS-B transmissions are still freely available but the value is in the aggregate product. In the case of ADS-B Exchange that aggregate takes a ton of work from volunteers who (if the comments here are any indication) are inclined to stop volunteering. An ADS-B receiver has a range of dozens, maybe hundreds of miles. Without that network of volunteers Joe Schmo in Santa Cruz will have no way of tuning in to that freely observable transponder in Austin.
      - nocoiner 4y ago
        There’s most definitely a coordination problem to be solve to recreate that network, and I don’t mean to understate the difficulty of that at all, but I’m wondering if a (reconstituted) network of a small-ish number of volunteers could scale up to, say, 80% of the current ADSB Exchange coverage surprisingly quickly? My feeder, which cost maybe $100 all-in (pi + sdr + antenna; though the pi was much cheaper then than it is now) has full coverage of two major airports. Normal range is 200 miles (obviously dependent on altitude) and sometimes picks up plans ~250 miles away, I assume depending on relatively rare atmospheric conditions. With reasonably optimal distribution of what, a few hundred receivers, my mental math is suggesting you could cover a majority of the continental U.S. landmass and a large majority of its population and air traffic? Again, not to understand the magnitude of this. But if someone’s objective is generally to redistribute public data, or track Gulfstreams on their way to Omaha during times of financial upheaval, or poke a finger in the eye of the private jet lobby, but not to create a 99% comprehensive, monetizable data source for a sale to private equity - maybe it’s not crazy infeasible?
  - notahacker 4y ago
    The information is already publicly broadcast; nobody's paying one particular feed company big bucks to remove it from their records when most others do it simply because they ask nicely or because they don't want to upset the government. And even without the feeds, if a guy with a device somewhere near an airport decides to tweet that Elon has landed, everybody knows anyway.

mindcrime 4y ago

I mean, if I were providing one of these feeds, I'd probably shut it down and look for (or create) a new community-driven alternative.

capableweb 4y ago
I chose to contribute my collected ADS-B data to ADS-B Exchange rather than Flightradar24 just because ADS-B Exchange was community driven and not owned by a company. I just turned off my sharing and looking for alternatives. If anyone know of any, please share them :)
- nerpderp82 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Operyl 4y ago
    Man, the blockchain being inserted wherever it doesn't need to be is becoming rampant on HN, isn't it? Humor me, though, how would that work and why would the cost of running a "blockchain," both in terms of money and energy wasted, be better than a simple feed aggregator?
    - nerpderp82 4y ago
      A signed append only log, distributed with webtorrent would provide provenance and distribution. This would allow for not having to have dedicated infrastructure for collection. One could also use USENET and get rid of the garbage will killfiles.
      - Operyl 4y ago
        And who maintains the signing keys? It's just as centralized, with tons more complexity.. EDIT: Regardless, the point I'm making is this is just way more work for something that really doesn't need a blockchain.

wpietri 4y ago

I might feel similarly, especially given my distaste for private equity. But in the AIS (ship tracking) space, commercial versions seem to do ok. MarineTraffic runs its own blatantly commercial effort. And AIShub.net is not commercial itself, but it is run by Astra Paging, which definitely is. I run a receiver that feeds into both networks, and in both cases I look at it as a value-for-value exchange.

dgacmu 4y ago

Some are likely to, but remember that feeding is a mutual exchange - sites that you feed to generally give you a free, no ads account. I feed both ADS-B exchange and flightaware for this reason. Although I will admit that the flight aware app is more useful unless you're interested in unfiltered data. Contributing to an unfiltered source is one motivation, but it's one of several.

jvanvleet 4y ago
This is my situation as well. If you travel a lot, having something light Flightaware giving you more detailed information about what is really happening with your flight or airport is wonderful and starting a feed was a fun way to get more features.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I have a basic (free) Flightaware account. I can't imagine anything relevant to commercial airliner travel that I'd need that I don't get from that free account. Is there something I'm missing? (I totally get the fun aspect and it's fairly cheap to put a receiver up.)
  - dgacmu 4y ago
    the only value for me is having no ads. which is, in fact, something i value, but not at the $80/month it would take to subscribe for. But it's worth sending my feed.
  - james_pm 4y ago
    From FR24, you get two years of historical data for starters.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Lots of interesting stuff outside of commercial airliners. Flightaware (and FR24) censors (for a fee). I remember emailing a journo covering a protest to look up and observe the plane circling around. But ultimately they’re different services: Adsb is vessel focussed, while FA/FR24 are flight# focussed. Want to find out what routes your aircraft typically flies? Adsb will be the place to check. Want to see if your flight is typically on-time? FA/FR24.

sschueller 4y ago

Well I for one will stop feeding them.