throwaway859876

It's an interesting link, and very interesting that these regulations are being litigated after decades of acceptance.

The big picture is that the FAA doesn't want the public to confuse the safety record of an airline with somebody flying a puddle-jumper (daily crashes in USA). The flying public just expects to get there without doing a risk evaluation, and puddle-jumpers are far riskier than airlines.

When you rideshare with Uber, there is a question of insurance.

When you rideshare a single-engine piston plane, there is a question of your life.

Nah, this is the "sharing" economy. The owners get paid, the proles get "work experience."

And ... you don't get stock. And ... when you go perm, your vesting schedule starts after your contract. And ... if you get hurt/sick while you're a contractor, you're fired. And ... you often don't have full facilities access as a contractor. And ... after you go perm, half your co-workers still think you're a contractor, and blow off your email requests.

Warts are still there, maybe worse with vnodes. Enjoy!

Prehistoric times: Nortel, Mitel, Corel, RIM

Recent times: possibly Shopify, one other moved to USA

Most money in Canada is controlled by civil pension funds, who don't like smallish investments for big risks.

Thus a large percentage of software engineers move to USA, and are active in Silicon Valley.

Retailers will be in for a lot of heartache if they hope that the FAA will "work with them."

ADS-B is already mandated for 2020. The spec is cast in stone, and the only thing that could change is the month it's enforced.

As we've seen with the SoCal fires last week, integrated tracking is essential for safe low-level flight.

Certified ADS-B avionics prices have ranged from $10,000 - $1,000,000+. Experimental prices are around $2,000 now.

Obviously that's more than the price of most consumer drones.

Also, what load can the ADS-B system handle? How many drones would overload it?