So Delta had a TCAS RA and responded to it. That’s not really news or anything particularly unusual. I think I get around ~2-3 RAs a year or so, usually because someone is climbing or descending fast and TCAS gets scared because it doesn’t know when the planes are going to level off.

They do say they surveyed moviegoers. That’s a lot of self selection right there. I think movie theaters are a terrible value so I hardly ever go to theaters.

A single pilot would need the ability to control the plane and override automation and that’s a very dangerous thing.

A single task saturated human in a stressful situation is more of a liability than a benefit. A single pilot can fixate on problems and try to solve them, even if they’ve totally misidentified the situation. Add another set of eyes and you naturally slow things down and handle situations better. The Air France crash in ’09 is a decent example of how one person can totally misinterpret a problem and then the remedy caused a crash, the other crew members were able to figure out what was happening, but it was too late to recover. More crew are an additional chance of success.

Then there’s the whole one pilot is a single point of failure problem. An incapacitated pilot is a fairly straightforward problem, but what about a '15 Germanwings type of situation where the pilot tries to intentionally crash?

As a pilot, not anytime soon, and not just because I’m worried about my job. Like cars, you can automate 95% of flying pretty easily and for the most part, we already do. But also like cars, that last 5% is several orders of magnitude more difficult.

But cars have a big advantage over planes in automation, if the computer gets totally confused, it can pull over, stop and let the driver figure things out. A plane can’t stop flying without hitting the ground so the computer can’t give up in an edge case. There’s also a different standard for safety. A few dozen teslas slam into walls and not many people care outside of immediate families. 70 people die in a plane crash and it’s international news for months.

I figure it’ll happen, but not anytime soon. And zero pilots is way more feasible than one pilot. And no way in hell can a robo flight attendant manage a cabin in normal operations let alone an emergency, I don’t think that part will ever happen unless we go full synth.

According to Ol’ Elon the robo-taxi service has been a couple months away since 2017 or so. I can’t imagine it’s much closer now than then.

“I think nano is the premier terminal text editor.”

I’ve found people bother me least when I look vaguely annoyed at everything. Resting bitch face is a powerful tool.

The mod that got me into modding still has a special place in my heart. It was the Shockwave mod for C&C Generals. Shockwave absolutely could have been vanilla if EA deigned to finish the Zero Hour expansion. It was just pure polished perfection for that game.