Meh, they're keeping "see and avoid."

This really strikes me as the wrong way to go about this. Sure, changing this principle would require completely rewriting the rules for ALL forms of air travel. However, I think that see and avoid already works poorly in practice and will become even more untenable once drone technology really takes off. There are far better ways for aircraft to avoid each other, and sooner or later we'll need to come to grips with the fact that you can build a device capable of broadcasting its position to nearby aircraft for the cost of a smartphone (you need a GPS and a radio, which virtually every phone in the US has had for over a decade due to 911 compliance rules - they had them long before they had touchscreens). There is no reason that clearances shouldn't be communicated via modems talking to computers and followed by computers to ensure that airways remain free of conflicts. Humans just mess things up. If you want to have them so that when they get disoriented they can override the computer and crash the plane to give the investigators more work, just find someplace else to fly. :)

They're testing the drones in a low-density area. They could have just said "avoid flying over people" and left it at that.

Which of those rules of the air are relevant to flying a drone flying under 500'? About the only rule I can think of is the one that tells pilots not to fly below 500', which they're intentionally violating. Knowing which way to turn if you spot a crop-duster heading towards you isn't going to be a big help when you're not displaying navigation lights and the crop-duster has no way to know which way you're headed and won't see you anyway.

The problem is that this kind of thing stifles innovation, which means that all the R&D ends up moving overseas and the US will end up being perpetually behind in what is eventually likely to be a technology that completely replaces all aviation today (civil or military). Is that in the US interest? I'm not saying that Amazon should be flying two-ton drones over major cities without any oversight, but this is about testing concepts in the middle of nowhere.

It probably makes more sense to ensure that the people programming the drones understand the rules of flying, and then only if they're actually going to fly in conflict with other aircraft. In that situation the rules would probably need to be changed anyway, since "see and avoid" isn't going to work when you can't see the drone.

They could have different requirements like "just keep it under 400 feet and away from populated areas and do whatever you want as long as OSHA doesn't have a problem with it." I don't see how that would cost taxpayers money, or be any less safe.

The FAA didn't give Amazon permission to operate drones in cities. It gave them permission to operate drones in the middle of nowhere, where there probably are more bunnies than people walking around.

Let me get this. The FAA doesn't consider it safe for Amazon to play around with a drone outdoors in a rural area under 400' altitude unless:

1. It is in VFR conditions.
2. The specific design is pre-approved by the FAA.
3. The drone operation holds a private pilot license.
4. The drone operator holds a medical certificate.

Wouldn't want to have the operator die of a heart attack, and then have the drone go out of control and hit a rabbit. Wouldn't want the pilot sitting in a chair and looking at a monitor to have medical conditions that cause issues with balance and vertigo. Better make sure that the pilot staring at the monitor 12" from his face has good vision.

I get that they want to keep these things close to earth and away from airports. I don't get why you need to be able to glide a plane onto the runway during an engine failure in the landing pattern when you're probably flying a drone that is incapable of gliding at all and which is multi-engine besides.

Flying drones and flying planes are completely different skillsets. The FAA really needs to get away from making drone piloting an add-on to a private pilot license.

Isn't that basically the whole point of the article? Google tries new things, and abandons them if they don't work out.

Sure, but the point is that you often can't do the one without the other. Fear of failure tends to cause companies to just stick with what they already do well. That means they basically aren't learning anything at all.

Of course companies should fund the projects that they think are most likely to become profitable. They'll still fail at some of them, and willingness to embrace that increases the odds that they'll come up with something truly innovative.

A big problem with software project management is that software projects are rarely equivalent to building houses/bridges/etc. You can't just look at the square footage and guess how long it will take to build.

I agree that quality management is a value-add in any industry. However, that doesn't mean that you can manage a sports team the same way as a construction team or an orchestra or an art gallery or an ERP implementation team or a video game studio.

Are you saying that individual employees should be compelled under force of law to perform a job against their will?

The $10 cabs that are already 100% saturated will still be around to not give you a cheap ride out of town even if the option to ride uber for $100 exists.

When you cap prices, it inevitably leads to shortages one way or another. The only time it makes sense is in monopoly situations. The whole point of services like Uber is to get rid of the monopolies. There is no reason there can't be 25 other similar competing services, which means that prices will generally reflect market conditions.

And in a true disaster situation, the national guard should be getting everybody out free of charge anyway. I'm referring to situations that raise prices where the national guard isn't giving everybody free rides. Clearly in those situations Uber couldn't charge a lot of money, since who would pay $200 for a ride the government would give them for free?

And that is necessary for taxis, since as a passenger all you see is a random yellow-painted car pull up which might or might not be a legally-licensed taxi. Also, it is important that they haven't been convicted of a crime, since the driver could shoot you and dump you in a ditch and nobody would know you had even gotten into the car.

With a reservation system like Uber the car that shows up is pre-identified, so you don't need any kind of further validation. Likewise, your trip was recorded in advance, so it would be impossible for the driver to do something to you without being detected, which is a deterrent to crime. Sure, he could do something to you anyway, but anybody driving a car could run you over on the sidewalk too, and we can't regulate everything.

I'm sure plane tickets fluctuate in value by factors this large. People can easily pay 10x more/less for the same ticket depending on when they buy it.

I don't get the problem - why wouldn't you want more people driving people around when there is more demand for drivers? If there is an emergency and I have to get out of town, I'd rather pay $100 for a ride that gets me there than try to hail one of the already-in-use cabs for a $10 ride.

How many of those regulations really offer any value in a reservation system like Uber? Why have the license in a lighted frame when you can just display it to the user on their phone or whatever? Why does the user need to see the license anyway?

Many of those regulations herald back to the day when enforcement of the law and recordkeeping was difficult, so they had to try to keep tabs on what was going on and deputize the citizenry.

I see variable fares as a benefit. Why not have reserve drivers who are willing to step in when things get busy for a higher rate? If somebody was paying $500/hr I'd be happy to get in my car and give people a lift, but I'm not going to do it for $10/hr. That is how virtually every other area in the economy works.

Well, it was already divulged that they root sysadmins to get credentials to log into boxes even when the sysadmins themselves are of no interest to them otherwise. (Ie, ISIS has a website hosted by AWS, so they find some random Amazon employee who VPNs in from home and steal their keys or such.)

I have no idea if they're rootkitting tor nodes, but it seems like a fairly obvious way to circumvent the tor network. If you have root on most of the nodes, then you can trivially follow most of the traffic.

The big thing with the NSA's hacking efforts is that it is largely automated. If they stick a list of tor IPs into a database, they'll all get hacked automatically, and then managed automatically. If somebody does a security update and only 3 of their 5 backdoors are left intact somebody will be notified to step in and open two more or whatever. It is basically what you'd get if you combined anonymous with a competent sysadmin team and a bunch of security researchers and then a bazillion SMEs to make sense of the extracted data. It probably costs as much for the NSA to hack into another PC as it costs Amazon to spool up another virtual machine.

The problem is that it doesn't work this way in the US. The way it works here is:

1. Usually swipe card. MAYBE use a contactless system.
2. Sign piece of paper.
3. When you leave the merchant keeps a copy of all the data required to impersonate you in future transactions.

A big part of Google Wallet and Apple Pay is getting rid of #3. In Europe chip and pin protects you against #3 for the most part - the merchant doesn't get all the credentials necessary for future transactions as some of them stay in the chip.

Scenario 1 - Apple creates new system. If it takes off, Apple makes more money.

Scenario 2 - industry creates a new system. If it takes off, industry makes the same money they have always made. Industry is mostly run by MBAs who don't realize that if somebody else does scenario 1 they might become obsolete.

Can you see why scenario 2 not happening isn't as bizarre as you might think it should be? We're also talking about banking - hardly the most progressive industry on the planet. We still use paper checks in the US and think that taking a few days to do an electronic funds transfer is normal.

They claim they have insurance elsewhere. They're just not licensed with a particular government agency.

I think the safety law issue is a red herring. The reason you need to license cabs is that they make trips without any kind of recording of the event. If I get in a cab and pick you up on the curb, I could kill you and leave you in a gutter someplace and nobody would know you were ever in my cab. Systems that involve reservations are inherently more secure, because there is traceability.

I think that these kinds of systems need to be regulated differently. Applying the same rules as for taxis that can be hailed just drives up costs without providing any real safety improvement.