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In England there has recently been a horrific tragedy that resulted in a 16 month old child losing an eye after a drone crash landed on top of them. This is a terrible event but it isn't the first time someone's drone went kill all babies. Actually this isn't the second time a drone did this either: it is the second time an irresponsible pilot is screwing up remote control flying machines for the rest of us pilots and it got into the news. It is very problematic that babies are much more cute than the average remote control helicopter and most of the population likes babies more than flying pieces of plastic and metal.
People are dumb with these devices and lack respect; this is getting out of control. If bad pilots keep hitting babies it'll be impossible for anyone to get their hands on a remote control airplane, helicopter, or what most people would call a drone, unless they get licensed first. That isn't a registration: licensing. I don't even like the registration requirements the FAA has recently proposed. However I'm a practical person and soon a giant backlash is going to come and it will sweep up the good and bad pilots. Whats worse people are engaging in conversations about "fixing" this drone problem and they have no clue what they are talking about.
[More after the break.]
Some ideas I've seen: Put prop guards on it so the props can't ever do this again. Nope that won't work on anything but the smallest devices and it is also unproductive weight for most flying. Performance flyers will clip the things off because they are used to modifying their gear all the time. You probably won't find them in a park though so you'll never know about it. Only allow small drones. This won't really work either: it's not like the eyeball is going to weigh the drone at the moment the propeller strikes it. The micro and nano sized drones can destroy an eyeball too. I doubt if the registration requirements are going to help much.
Any flying remote control device is dangerous. Hobbyists know this and the injury rate has remained low considering we all deal with unreliable machines carrying liquid fuel or explosive batteries, one or more blenders attached, and a horsepower or more on tap, being controlled with a device that itself has a lot of single points of failure. As a pilot to be surprised that one of them falls out of the air is irresponsible. Unfortunate things happen but this one never should have.
A few days before this event I published four rules of quadcopter safety as a joke in my journal. Here is a copy of some common sense things that would have stopped this from happening. From what I can tell the person was also flying illegally as the machine shouldn't have been that close to any person even if they are a baby.
- All quadcopters are always dangerous.
- Remove the throttle lock or arm the craft only immediately before takeoff.
- Be sure of your airspace and what is under it.
- Never point the camera of your quadcopter at something you are not prepared to defend yourself in court against.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday December 03 2015, @04:21AM
I'm typically one of those that prefer to read sterile hyperlinks BUT I really liked your submission and I think it's a good model for moving forward on Soylent News.
I know the people running the show have talked about making some original content. If there is a show piece to say "This is what we want", I think this should be it.
My reasons: There is an actual news story worth seeing (although if it were alone, it would have been a bit weak), you have knowledge of the subject matter, your opinions are not inflammatory (very important), and you have insightful comments.
I very much enjoyed the submission and would like to see more like these.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday December 03 2015, @05:36AM
I'm typically one of those that prefer to read sterile hyperlinks BUT I really liked your submission and I think it's a good model for moving forward on Soylent News.
Thank you. I really appreciate that feedback. Honestly it has been a gamble on submission as if you take everything at face value my approach does not perfectly follow the rules. I thought it would be worth trying it out to see how the reaction goes. I like to see opinions of others and I enjoy having my opinions shaken up as well. Aggressive, raunchy, angry comedians that make me laugh and feel uncomfortable are the best in my opinion.
I know the people running the show have talked about making some original content. If there is a show piece to say "This is what we want", I think this should be it.
If that is the case I'd like to provide some feedback to the community and the SN crew about my journey here. What ever decision happens, pro or con, I think this information would be helpful. At times I felt as if I was breaking the rules on submission because I did dig to check on this. Ultimately I felt the "risk" involved with going against the grain is outweighed by the benefit and I sent my submissions in. It was a really good feeling when despite being brand new and possibly violating policy I had my submissions accepted. Doubly so for my username I selected since I decided there too it'd be worth the uphill battle I would have to go through to earn respect with this user name just so I could have it. I do stuff the hard way for fun some times which is also why I decided I would push the limits and send this type of content in.
If there is a desire to encourage this type of content it would help to change the policies to show it. I think it also demonstrates a workflow issue with the submission process since there is not any way (at least that I see) to get feedback to an author on their submission. I had to run on faith and wait to see if my submissions got ignored and if they did try to infer if I did something wrong I should attempt to fix. Because it could have been the part where the content bends the rules or it could be the part where some of the hyperlinks are garbage or there was a formatting error. The ambiguity kinda stinks. I got lucky that my submissions were picked up quickly.
I think too that more feedback to content a submitter would be good. If the story is rejected for some reason it helps them to understand why so they can improve. If the story can be adjusted before it goes out to become better feedback is good there too. Collaborating on a story before it is locked into a state where it has to get published would help a lot. I'm not sure how open that process should be if things like opinion are going to be involved because a consensus would be great at killing points of view like mine. However working with editors to improve the content is something I would be very much interested in.
What I really wonder is why Kuro5hin degraded. It was a pure user submission site and had a review and community participation process. I thought it was pretty good and enjoyed much of the content on there. If there is something wrong with that model though it would be worth understanding what went wrong and to make sure not to repeat it.
My reasons: There is an actual news story worth seeing (although if it were alone, it would have been a bit weak), you have knowledge of the subject matter, your opinions are not inflammatory (very important), and you have insightful comments.
I very much enjoyed the submission and would like to see more like these.
I think you will find that people who find it worth the time to invest in writing content like this will mostly be those who are very passionate about the topic. And in that case the passion will not just drip through it might pour out like I did. I would encourage this as passion makes things interesting. The signal to noise ratio though is important and group think and misinformation happen quickly and easily. Personally that is why I like seeing things that make me question myself.
One idea I had thought of bringing up was an explicit opinion topic. Not everyone is going to want to see content like this but I would like to see room for it. By having an opinion topic it would alleviate the ambiguity in terms of "should I mark this thing as being an opinion even though it has a baby joke in it?" and could stop a lot of noise in the comments from people saying opinions degrade the site. I understand the discussion of policy is important but if there is a thought about allowing this as policy then it would be good to have a way to reduce the noise generated by people trying to stomp out opinion.
That's my thoughts. Thank you again for commenting and bringing this topic up.