And this is why I fear that parts suppliers like HK are going to end up on a hit list eventually.

Trying to regulate radio controlled models is going to be about as hard as regulating any other dirt cheap consumer technology. For the regulation to be effective, it's going to have to be extremely heavy-handed. Then we'll end up in an endless cat-and-mouse game of workarounds.

2-5 years from now your HobbyKing multirotor controller board will be sold as a generic robotics gyrostabilizer board, with no mention of flight. It will also be delivered without firmware. You'll have to find an illegal overseas torrent of the firmware file you need, and you'll have to flash it yourself. At this point you'll have committed multiple felonies, like every other person at your hobbyist flying field, but since "they" only go after the biggest offenders (and people that they need to charge with something), you'll probably be fine. Probably.

Except once in a while, you won't be fine, because the eye of Sauron will turn to you. Then we'll get a news story about an "unjust" drone bust and it'll be discussed here.

"14 Year Old Inventor Builds Unregistered Drone, Arrested by FBI"

This story will happen when a kid does the exact same stuff that every other hobbyist does, but he flies his technically illegal drone too close to someone fussy. So maybe the kid's drone scares someone's show horse in their yard, and the horse owner calls the FBI, and then the kid gets jammed up, and we talk about it here and hope it won't happen to us.

I am an introvert without a Facebook account (or Twitter, or Instawhatever). And I love social media.

I kind of want to be left alone, or rather, I want to choose when and how I interact with people. With most people seemingly socializing through Facebook, it is a snap to opt out of unwanted social pressures and small talk if you aren't also a user.

Facebook casts a long shadow. It is easy to disappear in it.

The space station got an advanced screening.

http://www.theguardian.com/fil...

The parent poster, therefore, must be an astronaut.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

Not the gibberish version the editor chose to link.

> even though it has triggered once or twice when there was nothing there due to a sensor glitch.

Based on this story I'd worry about an ill-timed glitch causing me to be hit from behind.

> No, not from the US.

Now your post makes more sense... It sounded like a European wonderland, and it was.

Yeah, we have nothing like the cheap standardized bank-to-bank systems you have. If you want to send money, you use a check, and put your magic banking numbers out there on a piece of paper... Or you use a 3rd party system like PayPal.

Technically, that isn't 100% true. We're not totally stone age... Maybe bronze age. Banks often have a bill payment system you can use, and the bank handles making a transfer to the utility company. It is not something you can invoke manually and arbitrarily, because it's a big pain to set up. Also, many targets are not set up to receive electronic payments, and so the bank will print and mail a check. It's also not an option for private party transfers.

WRT checks--elsewhere in the thread people had posted that not only do they never need to use checks, their ATMs had stopped accepting checks for deposit. That also was probably not happening in the US.

Do you live in the US? I have never seen anything like "e-invoicing" used for private parties. If I want to send money to someone else's account from your bank (not via 3rd party) the options are a check, or a "wire transfer" which has high fees and takes days to process. My banks and CUs simply don't have another option. I wish they did.

People on the thread are saying their ATMs actually reject checks... Never heard of anything like that in the US.

> Money going to relatives is often in the form of a check for me, since a lot of my family is tech-averse.

Even if they are not tech-averse, how do you easily get money to someone, as a private party, without a check? At least in the US, at any bank or CU I have used, there is no practical way to send money electronically person to person. A "wire transfer" costs $40 in fees and takes days to clear.

You can use PayPal but then there are fees.

You can use Bitcoin I guess but that is still more than a bit of a pain in the ass if you aren't already a regular user.

> I'm disappointed the White House has ignored so many petitions ...

There hasn't been action or even acknowledgement of many petitions. But how do we know that they are being ignored? Put your name on the wrong petition, you might put yourself on a list.

I may have misunderstood you. I thought your original post was saying "Americans are more likely to be shot by their police because the police fear everyone they meet is armed." Are you instead saying that the police shouldn't be armed?

Anyway, we have a weird cultural issue here, where we let these things happen, and then even as half the people take to the streets, the other half cheer on the authorities. How we treat ourselves has become politicized.

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

I believe you are conflating two different issues, police use of excessive force and private ownership of weapons.

I am sure that if one were to carefully analyze the situation, some of the deaths caused by the police are due to the fact that Americans are more likely to be armed. But I do not believe that is the exclusive or even majority cause of so much violence by our police.

We see a lot of news stories about people dying in chokeholds and the like. The police also seem to shoot our dogs. They use a SWAT team when it isn't necessarily called for.

Those things aren't happening because someone might be carrying a gun.

There is a separate issue--how we allow ourselves to be policed. And we're not doing a good job of setting boundaries.

I was a navigator at Gattaca.

I worked at an office which specified the objects you could have on your desk. Leave your stapler on your desk, and Lumberg would come by and tell you to put it away and tidy up.

I was told it was part of their arrangement with the interior designer. Talk about form over function!

I have done several ride-alongs and it WAS really eye-opening.

I had a cop tell me about the time they were in a gunfight with someone, firing into a building. Another cop rolled up, the cop jumped out of his car, and he started firing in the general direction of his colleagues. "Guys, what are we shooting at?" he said. The story was recounted as being hilarious, not horrifying.

I had a cop tell me about the way that when he found an asshole, he offered him a beating instead of an arrest. "You'd be surprised how many people take the beatin'," he told me.

I had a cop tell me about the time he visited a house for some kind of domestic complaint, and ended up banging the mom, and shortly after, banged the daughter. "You get more ass than a toilet seat in this job," he told me. "It can destroy some men."

Based on my experience doing ride-alongs I decided not to pursue a career as a cop.

> recent admission by the FBI that they were biased to decide a match in forensic hair analysis, which may have led to up to 14 wrongful executions.

Interesting, do you have a link?