Proposed FAA Rules Would Limit Commercial Drone Use

As reported by the New York Times:In an attempt to bring order to increasingly chaotic skies, the Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday proposed long-awaited rules on the commercial use of small drones, requiring operators to be certified, fly only during daylight and keep their aircraft in sight.

The rules, though less restrictive than the current ones, appear to prohibit for now the kind of drone delivery services being explored by Amazon, Google and other companies, since the operator or assigned observers must be able to see the drone at all times without binoculars. But company officials believe the line-of-sight requirement could be relaxed in the future to accommodate delivery services.

The proposed regulations would cover only nonrecreational unmanned aircraft weighing up to 55 pounds, and would not apply to the recreational use of drones, which have become hugely popular with hobbyists and are covered by other rules. However, the F.A.A. said it was considering additional rules to cover some uses of the smallest drones, so-called microdrones, weighing less than 4.4 pounds.

Some drone evangelists believe that in the next few decades, robotic aircraft will prove as useful and transformative to government, commerce and home life as the personal computer. But the exploding number of domestic drones has been accompanied by increasing safety problems, including reports of near misses involving passenger airliners and the crash of a small drone on the White House grounds last month.

The F.A.A. has worked on the rules for several years, and their release only begins a period of public comment and possible revision that could take as long as two years before they take effect.

“We have tried to be flexible in writing these rules,” Michael P. Huerta, the F.A.A. administrator, said in a statement. “We want to maintain today’s outstanding level of aviation safety without placing an undue regulatory burden on an emerging industry.”

Also on Sunday, President Obama signed a memorandum requiring government agencies to report publicly each year a “general summary” on their drone use, though the order includes a loophole allowing secrecy for operations involving national security or law enforcement.

The memorandum addresses worries that drone surveillance could invade privacy. It requires agencies to adopt rules governing “the collection, use, retention, and dissemination of information obtained by UAS,” or unmanned aerial systems, and making sure their drone use complies with the law and the Constitution.

The draft rules and the presidential order reflect growing official concern about the dangers posed by the unregulated proliferation of drones in many industries. After a decade in which unmanned aircraft were mainly associated with spying and killing terrorists, small drones in the last few years have been adopted by real estate agents to photograph properties, farmers to survey crops and electric utilities to inspect power lines. Hobbyists, who can buy a microdrone for less than $1,000, now use them to film everything from fireworks displays to football games.

Amazon, the Seattle-based online retailer, complained that the proposed rules might slow the development of its proposed delivery service, Prime Air.

Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, said the proposed rules could take one or two years for final adoption and would not permit Prime Air to operate in the United States. “The F.A.A. needs to begin and expeditiously complete the formal process to address the needs of our business, and ultimately our customers,” he said.

Mr. Misener suggested that the company might launch its delivery service first in other countries with more accommodating rules. “We are committed to realizing our vision for Prime Air and are prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need,” he said.

Ryan Calo, an assistant professor of law at the University of Washington, said the rules would allow many of the uses of drones that people in the commercial sector wanted, including for agriculture, which is thought to be one of the biggest markets. Farmers have shown interest in using drones for crop disease detection from the air and more targeted spraying of pesticides.

Mr. Calo said the rules might be revised to allow the development of delivery businesses. “They could change, especially if someone shows autonomous flight modes can be safe,” he said.

The draft F.A.A. rules were received with relief by some commercial users who had been alarmed by earlier news reports that the agency might require commercial drone operators to have a pilot’s license. Instead, operators would have to pass a test to get a permit, and renew it every two years. The agency estimates that it would cost $300 to become certified, including fees and preparation costs.

Commercial drones would be allowed to fly no faster than 100 miles an hour and no higher than 500 feet. In most cases, they could not fly over people other than the operators.

The Aerospace Industries Association welcomed the proposed rules. The trade group’s president, Marion C. Blakey, said the rules would “pave the way for additional service organizations and industries to explore expanded operations” using drones.

OpenStreetMap Gets Routing

As reported by OpenStreetMap Blog: Good news for OpenStreetMap: the main website now has A-to-B routing (directions) built in to the homepage! This will be huge for the OSM project. Kudos to Richard Fairhurst and everyone who helped get this up and running.

You might be thinking, “Why would this be huge? Isn’t it just a feature that other map websites have had for years now?” Well, the first thing to note is that the philosophy of OpenStreetMap is not to offer a one-stop-shop on our main website, but to create truly open data to empower others to do great things with it. So there has already been fantastic OSM-based travel routing for many years, on excellent websites such as OSRM, Mapquest, Graphhopper, Cyclestreets, Komoot, cycle.travel… the list goes on and on.

But all of those things are on other websites and apps, so people don’t always realise that OpenStreetMap has this power. What this latest development has done is really neat: the OSM website offers directions which are actually provided by third-party systems, but they are included in the main site via some crafty JavaScript coding. So as well as being really handy in itself to have directions available, it helps “first glancers” to see all the things they can do with OSM.

But that’s not what makes it huge.

What makes it huge is the difference it will make to OpenStreetMap’s data by creating a virtuous feedback loop.

One of the main reasons we show a “slippy map” on the OpenStreetMap homepage is because people can look at it, see a bridge that needs naming or a building to add, click “Edit” and fix it straight away. That feedback loop is what allowed OpenStreetMap to build up what is now the most complete map of many regions around the world.

But we have a saying: “what gets rendered, gets mapped” – meaning that often you don’t notice a bit of data that needs tweaking unless it actually shows up on the map image. Lots of things aren’t shown on our default rendering, so the feedback loop offers less incentive for people to get them correct. And that goes doubly for things that you never “see” on the map – subtle things like “no left turn” at a particular junction, or “busses only” access on a tiny bit of road, or tricky data issues like when a footpath doesn’t quite join a road that it should join on to. Now that people can see a recommended route directly on the OSM homepage, they have an incentive to quickly pop in and fix little issues like that. The end effect will be OSM’s data going up one more level in terms of its quality for routing. This will empower everyone to do great things with geographic data and getting from A to B.

NoFlyZone.org Puts a Drone Geofence Around Your Home

As reported by Geek.com: The sky is increasingly filled with drone aircraft, but what about your personal airspace? Are you doomed to have remote controlled flying machines buzzing around above your house all day, watching your every move? NoFlyZone.org aims to provide an alternative by creating a database of places drones ought not to venture.

You can add your home to the database in just a few minutes. Go to the website and input your address along with your contact info. NoFlyZone.org will send you a confirmation email with a link to complete the registration of your own personal no-fly zone.

The operators of NoFlyZone.org seem to be mindful of the privacy-conscious people who will be taking advantage of the service. All you need to enter is the publicly available address and an email (it can even be a throwaway). However, that will also make it rather easy for someone else to register your address.

So what happens when you sign up? Ideally, drone aircraft will refuse to enter areas that have been geo-fenced as no-fly zones in the NoFlyZone.org database. This requires that the makers of drones sign on to support the NoFlyZone.org platform, though. These companies would need to include a setting in the firmware that prevents the drones from impinging on any no-fly zones.

Any drone that lacks GPS or simply doesn’t support NoFlyZone.org would still be able to zip through these areas without trouble.

NoFlyZone.org will only succeed if drone makers get on-board with it. So far HEXO+, Yuneec, and a few others have decided to honor the geo-fences deployed by NoFlyZone.org, but big players like Parrot and JDI haven’t made any moves yet. It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve, even if companies want to play nice with privacy. For example, how can a drone gracefully alert you to a no-fly zone? Should it stop dead no matter what it’s doing? JDI recently tried to update its drones to avoid parts of Washington DC, but bugs resulted in a rollback.

You can sign up for NoFlyZone.org now, even though the skies are not yet teeming with drones. Maybe it’ll catch on.

Starting this Week, Wireless Carriers Must Unlock Your Phone

As reported by C/NET: The days of carriers locking down devices to keep customers in place are officially dead.

Starting now, all US carriers must comply with requests from postpaid and prepaid customers to unlock their devices, as long as certain parameters are met. The industry group CTIA had committed last year to have all wireless carriers adhering to the regulation by February 11, 2015.

The move follows from President Obama last year signing into law the "Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act," which overruled a controversial 2012 decision by the Library of Congress.

The debate over phone unlocking has come a long way in just a few short years. Unlocking a phone allows owners to put the device on whatever carrier network they choose. For years, carriers have locked down devices, allowing them only to connect to their own networks. The move was designed to keep customers close and not see them stray to other carriers.

"We are pleased the FCC acknowledged the participating wireless carriers met the deadlines to unlock their customers' devices per the Consumer Code for Wireless Service," said Scott Bergmann, the CTIA's vice president for regulatory affairs, in a statement. "We also remind consumers that an unlocked device does not necessarily mean an interoperable one since different carriers use different technologies and spectrum bands."

For customers, the inability to unlock handsets had been a nuisance. Many consumers, seeking better network coverage or data plan pricing, have wanted to be able to move to a different network without having to buy a new device. An unlocked handset would allow that interchange between, say, AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Locked devices force customers to stick with their carrier networks and if they decide to switch, to buy a new device on the other carrier.

In 2013, the issue of unlocking hitting a tipping point when the Library of Congress held that the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) banned American consumers from unlocking their devices without the consent of their carriers. Critics took issue with the ruling, which actually came down in 2012 but went into effect in 2013. Then in August 2014 came the "Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act," which effectively made unlocking legal again.

Under the CTIA's Consumer Code for Wireless Service that went into effect Wednesday, carriers will have no choice but to remove locks on devices owned by both postpaid and prepaid wireless users.

On the postpaid side, carriers must unlock devices after a customer in good standing has fulfilled "postpaid service contract, device financing plan, or payment of applicable early termination fee." In other words, those subscribers who get smartphones for less by paying a subsidy at the beginning and paying in full over the life of a contract, must have satisfied that payment covenant before they can be allowed to unlock their device.

On the prepaid side, things are bit simpler: carriers must, upon request, unlock a handset "no later than one year after initial activation."

All unlocking, regardless of the type of customer, must be completed within two days of a request, and carriers are now required to inform consumers of their policies.

"Carriers that lock devices will clearly notify customers that their devices are eligible for unlocking at the time when their devices are eligible for unlocking or automatically unlock devices remotely when devices are eligible for unlocking, without additional fee," the code reads. "Carriers reserve the right to charge non-customers/non-former-customers with a reasonable fee for unlocking requests. Notice to prepaid customers may occur at point of sale, at the time of eligibility, or through a clear and concise statement of policy on the carrier's website."

SpaceX and Air Force Make Deal for Rocket Landing Pads

As reported by NBC News: SpaceX will take over a mothballed rocket launch site in Florida to develop landing pads for its Falcon family of rockets, the U.S. Air Force said Tuesday. A draft environmental assessment showed that the California-based company plans to build the pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 13, which was used for 51 Atlas and Agena rockets between 1958 and 1978. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The assessment was prepared for the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial space launches and landings in the United States, "This is a classic combination of a highly successful launch past morphing into an equally promising future," Brig. Gen. Nina Armagno, commander of the Air Force's 45th Space Wing, said in a statement.

SpaceX currently flies its Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, and the company is in the process of taking over Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, located just north of the Air Force facility. It also has a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and last month signed a similar deal to take over a second site there for a Falcon Heavy landing pad. 

        

SpaceX Launches DSCOVR Satellite from Cape Canaveral

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Wednesday into a clear sky colored by a setting sun, sending a satellite into space to monitor solar storms that can wreak havoc on Earth's power and communication systems.

The 6:03 p.m. launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station came on SpaceX's third try this week, and this time Florida provided a postcard-quality environment for launch. As the rocket rose, the sunset transformed the horizon backdrop into a stripe of rainbow pastels, from pink through blue, for it to pass through.

"The Falcon takes flight, propelling the Deep Space Climate Observatory on a million-mile journey to protect our planet Earth," declared NASA commentator Michael Curie.

However, out to sea, the weather did not cooperate. Because of heavy seas in the Atlantic Ocean, SpaceX canceled its plan to try to land the used first stage of the rocket on an unmanned barge and instead soft-landed it in the water, just a dozen yards from its target.

A little more than a half-hour after launch, the rocket carried the DSCOVR satellite to its first parking point about 125 miles into space.

"Everything has gone just as planned," Currie said after the satellite reached its orbit.

During nearly four months, NASA intends to slowly move the satellite much farther, eventually reaching a spot almost a million miles from Earth, or roughly four times the distance to the moon.

At that point, the gravitational forces of the sun and Earth are in equilibrium, allowing the satellite to follow the Earth around the sun while keeping a constant watch on both the sun and the Earth's sunny side.

There, the refrigerator-sized satellite will give NASA, the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data about events such as geomagnetic storms caused by changes in solar wind. The goal is to give scientists more detailed understanding to provide regional warnings about how the storms might affect power and communication systems.

The satellite was first built for a previous mission and repurposed by NOAA. Initially built in 1998, it was intended to observe Earth only, in a program proposed by then-Vice President Al Gore to monitor global warming.

The original program was scrapped by President George W. Bush. A few years ago NOAA convinced NASA to bring the satellite out of storage and reconfigured it as a solar-storm monitor.

Nonetheless, it retains its ability to monitor Earth's climate, detailing ozone and aerosol amounts, cloud height, vegetation and ultraviolet reflection by the atmosphere.

Gore, who attended the launch, sent a note to NASA after the satellite was deployed, saying it will "further our understanding of Earth and enable citizens and scientists alike to better understand the reality of climate crisis and envision its solutions."

DSCOVR will be replacing a NOAA satellite in roughly the same spot in space called the Advanced Composition Explorer, which was prone to signal disruptions from the very solar storms it was deployed to cover.

Consequently, the ACE satellite provides some data on major storms, but not enough, said Douglas Biesecker, NOAA DSCOVR project scientist.

"DSCOVR will not have that problem," Biesecker said. "It will be more robust."

SpaceX was unable to land its rocket, which was supposed to be an unofficial highlight for the mission. SpaceX hopes to be able to soft-land rockets to reuse them. A first attempt in January failed.

"The drone ship was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather. We are experiencing just such weather in the Atlantic with waves reaching up to three stories in height crashing over the decks," said a news release by SpaceX.

So the company decided to bring it down in the water.

Later SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted on Twitter, "Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather."

He also tweeted that the drone barge would be redesigned to better handle bad weather.

SpaceX got the launch off at its last opportunity, due to the position of the moon. Wednesday's was the company's third attempt in four days.

Tuesday's launch was scrubbed because winds blew at 100 knots at an altitude of 25,000 feet pretty much all day. SpaceX didn't bother to try Monday, when it rained almost all day. On Sunday, a radar glitch scrubbed the launch with less than three minutes left in the countdown.

Smartphone Theft Drops in London and Two U.S. Cities as Anti-Theft 'Kill Switches' are Installed

As reported by Reuters: Thefts involving smartphones have declined dramatically in three major cities since manufacturers began implementing "kill switches" that allow the phones to be turned off remotely if they are stolen, authorities said on Tuesday.

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

"We have made real progress in tackling the smartphone theft epidemic that was affecting many major cities just two years ago," said London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were among numerous officials arguing for new laws mandating the kill switches.

In California, where a law mandating kill switches has yet to go into effect, smartphone theft is dropping because some manufacturers have already started installing the software-based switches on the devices they sell, Gascon said.

“The wireless industry continues to roll out sophisticated new features, but preventing their own customers from being the target of a violent crime is the coolest technology they can bring to market,” Gascon said.

California's law, one of the nation's strongest, received wide support from California prosecutors and law enforcement agencies that hoped it could help reduce smartphone thefts.

According to the National Consumers League, handheld devices were stolen from 1.6 million Americans in 2012. In California, smartphone theft accounts for more than half of all crimes in San Francisco, Oakland and other cities.

Other states experiencing a rash of smartphone thefts have considered similar measures, and Minnesota passed a theft-prevention law last year.

So far, Apple, Samsung and Google have implemented kill switches on their smartphones, and Microsoft is expected to release an operating system for its Windows phones that has one this year, the three officials said in their news release.

But some of the smartphone systems require consumers to opt in, meaning not all will be protected when their phones are operating in the default mode.

Gascon, Johnson and Schneiderman called on all manufacturers to make the technology active as a default position, as Apple has done with its iPhones.