By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Internet giant Alphabet Inc <GOOGL.O>, the new holding company for Google, expects to begin delivering packages to consumers via drones sometime in 2017, the executive in charge of its drone effort said on Monday. David Vos, the leader for Alphabet’s Project Wing, said his company is in talks with the Federal Aviation Administration and other stakeholders about setting up an air traffic control system for drones that would use cellular and Internet technology to coordinate unmanned aerial vehicle flights at altitudes under 500 feet (152 meters).
“Our goal is to have commercial business up and running in 2017,” he told an audience at an air traffic control convention near Washington.
Alphabet and Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O> are among a growing number of companies that intend to make package delivery by drone a reality. But drone deliveries are not expected to take flight until after the FAA publishes final rules for commercial drone operations, which are expected early next year.
Two years after initial research began, Project Wing was announced in August 2014 with a YouTube video showing a field test of its most viable prototype in Australia.
The prototype flown in Australia, 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide and 0.8 meters (2.6 feet) tall, shares the same four-propeller quad copter design as popular consumer drones, but the company said consumers can expect to see new vehicle types and shapes as the project unfolds.
Inside the United States, Project Wing has conducted testing with NASA.
Vos, who is co-chair of an FAA task force charged with coming up with a drone registry, said a system for identifying drone operators and keeping UAV away from other aircraft could be set up within 12 months.
“We’re pretty much on a campaign here, working with the FAA, working with the small UAV community and the aviation community at large, to move things along,” he said.
Vos said a drone registry, which the Obama administration hopes to set in place by Dec. 20, would be a first step toward a system that could use wireless telecommunications and Internet technology including cellphone applications to identify drones and keep UAV clear of other aircraft and controlled airspace.
He said Google would like to see low altitude “Class G” airspace carved out for drones, saying it would keep UAV away from most manned aircraft aside from low-flying helicopters, while enabling drones to fly over highly populated areas.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Deborah M. Todd; Editing by Alan Crosby, Stephen R. Trousdale and Ken Wills)
It’s all fun and games until they start bombing each other’s data centers…
I wonder if they plan on a carve-out for amateur operators to avoid the expense of putting cellular equipment on their drones…sounds cost-prohibitive.
“More arachnid spaceship routers en route.”
Remember, you can never watch it too often.
(And your Barneyscan reply is sheer brilliance, sir. If “Moments” worked sanely, it’d be highlighted for the world.)
Also, while I’m rambling, I’m just fine with the pause ads just as long as they are teevee related. It’s when they shift to “FREE PHOTO PRINT” ads that I begin sharing your distaste.
You see Manhattan from WGN? Just finished S1 on Hulu. Really good. I assume many creative liberties were taken and some forced/contrived elements, but I’ll be paying out of pocket for just completed S2.
“Rudolph should be remastered in HD. This is a national disgrace.”
Be grateful. If they remastered it in HD, they’d crop to 16:9 and ruin it even worse.
Regarding Manhattan, this is the first I’ve heard of it. However, not only did I not sleep through civics class, but I’ve long been fascinated with the Los Alamos story, read a couple of books on it, and seen a couple of movies too. So, upon your recommendation, I’ll likely check it out once I get through my backlog of teevee seasons already on TiVo, but I’ll might have problems depending on how the ‘fictionalization’ is handled…
I assume it’s highly fictionalized… Given my ignorance of the project, I’m sure that worked to my advantage. Will pick up S2 on Amazon at some point.
“I assume it’s highly fictionalized”
Yeah. I skimmed the Wikipedia page, and it makes that quite clear.
“Given my ignorance of the project, I’m sure that worked to my advantage.”
Maybe, maybe not. There have been fictionalized films/TV I’ve loved based on events I’m very familiar with. And there have been ones where the fictionalization has bothered me incredibly. All depends on how things are handled, and such.
In short, my knowledge of the real story is actually an incentive for me to at least sample it, which is necessary given how rarely I get interested in basic cable dramas.
(And I’m just glad the series made room for at least a bit part based on Vannevar Bush. Dude invented the World Wide Web in the 1930’s, y’know.)
If you ever enjoy reading history, when you’re done with season 2, find yourself one of the many excellent books on either just Los Alamos, or on the whole damn sprawling project. The real story is incredibly wild.
“Terrified is pretty close to excited, right?”
You have absolutely no reason to be terrified, Dave. All you need to do is not make the slightest mistake 24/7 for the next 18+ years. Simple. Remember, human babies are natuallly as robust as a tall Jenga tower.
Really, all you need to do is to follow the 3 essential rules:
– Never expose the baby to bright light.
– Never let the baby get wet.
– Never feed the baby after midnight.
Can we at least agree on GMT?
“Can we at least agree on GMT?”
You know I’d help you out, if I could. Unfortunately, I am not responsible for the wording of the Birth EULA.
“Less about cost, more about complexity and clutter and time running the coax. Clutter of TiVo too. It’s rarely about cost.”
Why not wireless? Cat5 or wireless to the room, and then an Access Point in the corner, and one extra Access Point near the Mini.
No excessive running wires. One small device in the vicinity of the Mini is the only extra real clutter.
The excessive becomes the manageably sensible. And the rewards are tangible.
In the kitchen it’s usually about background noise (for me) or CNN (for wife). So the Roku apps are mostly sufficient for this location. Guest bedroom has coax and I could do a Mini there, but I really don’t want to encourage visitors. ;) Wish I could do a much more elaborate outdoor living space, but my options are the deck are pretty limited. We’re already talking about moving… flip it all!
“We’re already talking about moving… flip it all!”
A drastic response to lousy coax runs. But I hear rural Idaho is nice.
But what about the stickers you put up? They probably won’t peel off well enough to be re-used. Something to think about…
And don’t flip it. Burn it all down:
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself,
“Is that all there is to a fire?”
So, where’s my cigar?
You do know you should be live-tweeting this, right? I’m sure the WAF will be work with that…
It’s been an ordeal. Plans rarely go according to plan and folks wouldn’t want the details. Hopefully mom heals well and quickly because I’m exhausted.
Congratulations! To you, and especially to the wifey! (I guesstimate she did 52% of the work.) Congratulations again! Viva! Viva! Viva!
I’ll be waiting all day by the door for my cigar delivery.
“folks wouldn’t want the details”
Oh, how very little you understand the internet…
Also, while Eliana is superb, remember that it’s still not too late to change her name to Uber ExxonMobil Sheldon Adelson Zatz in return for substantial cash considerations…
Are you a better father than Iman Shumpert?
In your favor: naming and planning.
In Iman’s favor: using headphone cables. A Radio Shack delivery!
“On the plus side – up to 3 whopping hours of sleep last night!”
Just get a prescription for Modafinil. That’ll take care of it.
Also, while I’m quite sure it’s been a hectic few days for you, don’t panic. If my calculations are correct, you’ll be sending her off to college by the end of next weekend.
You’re posting on teh twits! Glad to see you took my advice on the Modafinil. Toldja it’d work.
So far, just adrenaline and fumes. I’m not sure how it’s possible… or if I should be driving. Perhaps there’s a hormonal component that baby triggers in Dad too? Despite all our planning, there are obviously some things you just can’t plan for (including an unexpected c-section and the work I’d have to take on for awhile). I haven’t quite gotten my head above water yet, but I opened the computer for the first time today and got the mail. So that’s some progress towards normalcy.
By the by, The f-ing Knick’s opening episode scarred me! Medicine has obviously come a long way. Although my wife’s epidural partially (largely?) failed and what she endured to deliver this baby… well, she’s got bigger balls than I. Hell.
“By the by, The f-in Knick’s opening episode scarred me!”
As well it should should! Besides being being brilliant motion pictures, it’s a goddamn horror show. Yes, progress has been made, but invasive medicine is still invasive medicine. Crazy Ben Carson was apparently quite skilled at his job, but still lost a damn lot of souls. Bad programming choice during a pregnancy, but once you two recover, it’s well worth a viewing or three.
“Although my wife’s epidural partially (largely?) failed and what she endured to deliver this baby… well, she’s got bigger balls than I. Hell.”
Toldja! I knew she did 52% of the work. As the wise Alice Cooper once said…
So, Dave, you now have backup on the merits of Manhattan from a Chucky Approved Reputable Critic™.
Congratulations! (And I’ll have to move it up in my mental queue. Added a OnePass after reading that piece.)
I do hope you’re taking advantage of your lazy vacation from work to do lots of binge-watching…
Well, I finally got you to retweet @internetofshit, even if it’s an outlier tweet of his. My work here is done.
(Though I gravely fear you don’t take the “entirely” caveat there nearly seriously enough…)
Wow. Ben Horowitz quite civilly engaging me on teh twits. Quarter million followers. Achievement unlocked.
Gracias amigo. My only minimal opsec is, as they say in Ghostbusters, “Don’t cross the streams.”
The funny thing is that if you scroll just a bit back on my timeline to about 10:30am yesterday, you can see what my actual Goal Of The Day was. And despite the “achievement unlocked” nonsense, I failed utterly and completely in my Goal.
Instead, they played good cop / bad cop with me. The bad cop tossed me off to his good cop partner, and he simply engaged in minimally reasonable adult chat to defeat my Goal. And I fell into the trap. Total fail on my part. Gotta rethink my strategy…
And FWIW, you’re quite welcome to follow and/or comment to the account, should it tickle your fancy. Just interact with him, not me.
(I’d follow you in an instant if I weren’t keeping my following list incredibly limited and curated as a means of signaling where he’s coming from.)
The lack of personal empowerment largely sent me down the path of apathy years ago. So I have no idea what you’re talking about and unless I also follow the people you’re speaking to, I won’t catch those missives. :) But maybe I’ll restart my ‘Fakeurbia’ Twitter account – I’m an expert in new urbanism gone awry.
“The lack of personal empowerment largely sent me down the path of apathy years ago. So I have no idea what you’re talking about and unless I also follow the people you’re speaking to, I won’t catch those missives.”
I hear you. But you ain’t totally clueless. Much better informed than the average bear, believe it or not. (Plus, there’s a movie/TV/weird component too.)
As far as following me being useless since I’m almost always directly addressing rather than posting to the world, yeah. I use teh twits massively wrong. I never look at my twit generated ‘following’ feed. I only read folks’ feeds via JS-free mobile pages, which gives me their ‘tweets & replies’ feed. (Got browser buttons that open up 5+ feeds at a time by topic.) For example, I read your feed multiple times a day, despite not following you.
The folks directly addressed are my real target: the fish to my lamprey. And I’ve gotten some decent engagement that way with folks I want to engage; then their large / smart / influential audiences can chime in. Same logic as to why I’m a blog commenter instead of a blogger.
So, yeah, literally following me is pretty damn useless, as opposed to checking my ‘tweets & replies’ page when it strikes your fancy…
I even found one reply directly from you!
Oh god. I just discovered Twitter Analytics. That’s a rabbit hole that is going to take up as much of my time as caring for a newborn.
The percent of reads and clicks is entirely depressing… Gotta keep eating these Ramen noodles.
“The percent of reads and clicks is entirely depressing”
All depends on where you’re coming from, of course. For me, it’s been a heartening experience. Twits I believed to be quite insightful or clever were being ignored, or so I thought. But they were actually prompting large number of ‘profile clicks’, which is sorta my metric of whether or not they were being appreciated.
Now if I could only get info on who was doing the profile clicks, I’d get so deep down the rabbit hole that I’d forget to eat…
Well, now we know that Oculus Rift actually will gain a critical mass of early adopters that will form a beachhead to drive it into the mainstream…
And the high ‘profile click’ numbers I sometimes get explain what was an utter bafflement to me for a day – why do I get many hundreds of reads on my few twits that don’t contain any @’s?
So I only have single-digit followers, but I’ve got an audience normally approaching a thousand. Who knew? Not me.
“If I wanted to totally avoid the snow/ice of upcoming storm, where could I drive to?”
Well, ever since they completed the bridge/causeway to Hawaii, that’s been the best option.
Otherwise, we’ll all remember you very fondly. Front page obit in Multichannel News.
“This storm is no joke. Really hoping the power stays on”
Power is the least of your worries, of course. The real key is having a 3 month supply of Soylent.
Best of luck to you and yours, and we’ll hopefully see you back on the blog and twitter in April.
For the remaining few hours you still have electricity, I’d recommend checking out the documentaries Snowpiercer and The Day After Tomorrow to get tips.
(I joke only because we went thru a lengthy power outage a few years back during Sandy. And it was all pretty OK! The hand cranked / solar radio was nice to have. No newborn to deal with, of course, but I genuinely don’t think that would’ve been a real problem. Stock up on D batteries, if it’s not too late for that. Candles too. And charge your Kindle.)
The power outage only concerns me in regards to climate control with a newborn we have to keep warm. Thinking of cranking the heat tonight downstairs with the basement as the location we retreat to with fewest outside windows/doors. If it’s really 30″ or more, we probably won’t be able to evacuate anywhere. F’n nature!
“The power outage only concerns me in regards to climate control with a newborn we have to keep warm.”
Heater won’t work w/o electricity even once it’s lit? Huh. Who knew?
We lost heat during Sandy, and compensated by constantly boiling pots of water in the kitchen adjoining the living room, which actually really helped. (Though it was a much less voluminous space than you’re dealing with.) I guess just swaddle that kid up to the nines? To slightly reassure you, humans did manage to reproduce and survive in cold climes back before civilization. And you’ve got a bunker to work with they didn’t have.
“If it’s really 30″ or more, we probably won’t be able to evacuate anywhere. F’n nature!”
Forecast has been shifting. 200″ now predicted. Buy ALL the canned goods. Pray for an asteroid strike.
The downstairs heat is gas (upstairs is electric), but the thermostat is electric. We have a gas fireplace, but it may be the same deal with the starter. Not that it generates any heat – the way it’s vented, it’s the coldest spot in the house, mostly decorative I guess. I imagine the stove and stove top will work, but yeah this is a non-practical 3700 sq ft place with way too many windows for this particular event. Our power has been very reliable in the past and is all underground, in the immediate area anyway. One of the weather “models” had to be thrown out – it said 50″ of snow in certain places (where I probably reside;).
“The downstairs heat is gas (upstairs is electric), but the thermostat is electric.”
Time to pull out the instruction manual and see if there is any way to override the thermostat and regulate manually? (Probably too new-fangled for that, but worth a look, if you’ve got access to the info.)
Part of the whole beauty of gas should be uninterrupted services in such emergencies….
(Also, when it ends up coming down to burning furniture, make damn sure you are venting properly.)
By the by, glad we got the hot water heater gas leak resolved last week since we may be camping out in the basement!
bump, so i can read….
Glad I was able to hack into your Arlo cameras.
Freaky live-feed…
Elevator Pitch: a film script to pay for EZ’s college fund.
Your family surviving the blizzard; The Revenant meets The Blair Witch Project, pseudo-“filmed” by your Arlo cameras. Think about it. We can still make next year’s Sundance.
Get your appetizers on.
Well, while you were dilly-dallying around with your “snow” and “flooding” and “structures might collapse” “crisis”, I got something genuine accomplished today. Finally, got evil andreessen to block me.
(Glad all seems to be intact so far with you, give or take…)
Looks like you’re getting what I got! So wish my wife had let us buy a condo. Monitoring three trouble spots. Warned wife and baby of potentially loud noises tonight due to two of them. Worst case is just property damage, so I guess I’ll be thankful.
PS congrats on the alienation. How do you know you’re blocked? You can’t see the feed or reply?
“Looks like you’re getting what I got!”
Yup. I wasn’t going to brag. I wasn’t going to boast. But, well, USA! USA! USA!
Of course, it’s bit different in urban utopia. Restaurants still open. Bars still open. Folks wandering the streets like it’s a party…
“Warned wife and baby of potentially loud noises tonight”
Wow. EZ’s got language comprehension down already? Dunno what you folks read to her in utero, but you and the wife ought to be writing books and giving TED Talks.
“How do you know you’re blocked?”
Punch up the feed while I’m logged in, and it’s all explicitly spelled out. “You are blocked from following [his handle] and viewing [his handle]’s Tweets. Learn more”
Happened about 3 minutes after the offending tweet. I kept reloading his page cuz I figured that was the golden ticket, but still got a boatload of ‘profile clicks’ in that short time…
Time to make a new account?
“Time to make a new account?”
Nah. I do most of my twit reading sans-JS and thus not logged in, so I can still read him. And the whole project was just based on the fact that I’ve always strongly disliked him, and that there was a Buzzfeed article on him that morning about his tendency to indiscriminately block tons of accounts, often for reasons the block-ees couldn’t figure out. Only reason I didn’t get blocked that day was cuz of the Buzzfeed article.
He’s always struck me as the Hooli villain from Silicon Valley, but even more malevolent due to having broader interests / aspirations.
Plus, that other pseudonym actually achieved a fair amount of fame from 2003-2010 in certain political blogosphere circles. The politico internet folks with longevity know me well. So it’s gotta stick around.
Mission accomplished, and time to move on to far more interesting things.
(I’ve thought of doing a Chucky account, but I’ve got fewer interesting things to say about tech than about politics/economic/movies/TV. Plus, there are still plenty of interesting tech blogs around I can and do use to opine on those topics, while political blogs with comment sections have essentially disappeared with the rise of teh twits.)
“Final totals in. 36 f’n inches!”
Well, you beat us, easy. Don’t believe the hype.
(As as wuz noted, stay safe above all. Property is a hassle and expensive, but it’s only property.)
So, have you been able to escape your home yet?
If so, be very, very careful. The zombie apocalypse began during the storm, and the media has been successfully keeping it very quiet.
Yep, I’m in the office today. Worked from home yesterday, but did make it out for coffee and wife for groceries. In an emergency, as of late Monday I could have gotten out but wasn’t comfortable with mostly routine stuff until yesterday. Probably will tell Mom she’s free to venture out tomorrow. I do have a broken window, but don’t know if it’s from the storm — it’ll be a several hundred dollar endeavor which pisses me off. It’s a real window but fake in that there’s a wall behind it. Half tempted to get a black plastic plate and cover it all. Other than that, so far in good shape. Although my wife isn’t happy that I now want to rent an apartment so all this crap is someone else’s problem… ;)
What time is the donald?
“What time is the donald?”
I knew you could get the handle of this SEO thing.
The multi-day Round 2 of Trump-Ailes: This Time It’s Serious is the most interesting thing of the campaign since the multi-day Round 1 of Trump-Ailes: Donald Blitzkriegs Fox In First Debate.
Last night’s “Vanilla Milkshake” O’Reilly / Trump sideshow was suitably bizarre. Got a bunch of things set to DVR tonight.
The bizarre thing about Round 2 is that Ailes forced Trump out. He fired the first strike, knew the result, and refused to walk away. This one is like Stalingrad.
(And I’ve gotten crazy Twitter analytics the past week. Iowa, y’know. But here’s the thing I still don’t get. I’ve got single-digit followers. I post a twit with no @’s, it gets no retwits, and within five minutes, I’ve got a hundred impressions. How in holy f*ck does that work? I really wish I knew. Not complaining, of course. Beats the alternative. Just don’t get the mechanics at all.)
Also, congrats on having the extreme foresight to time your pregnancy to avoid the coming Zika virus outbreak here!
You folks narrowly beat out the El Salvador outcome.
Well dang, if I bathed the baby more often, I might have noticed a roof leak in her bathroom sooner. I wonder if it’s a real leak or if the snow was piled so high that it melted into one of the vents. Hm. Being a home owner is a bitch. At least we’ll save some money and internal disruption as the window guy is going to take a short cut and glue a new pane of glass into the existing sash from the outside – total bill should come in less than $150 and we don’t really have to coordinate with him once he gets the materials.