In case you missed it, Seth reported that Turkish Airlines’ brand new 787-9 was damaged during a photo shoot.
Reports suggest that the aircraft window melted out of its mount in the fuselage. How did it get so hot? Seems that the company was filming inside the plane and had it fitted inside and out with studio lighting to make that work. The heat from those lights caused the window to melt.
It seems like the back light was way too close to the fuselage and melted one of the electrochromatic windows. The photos are kind of crazy.
Türk Hava Yolları’nın yeni uçağı Boeing 787-9 tipi Dremliner yolcu uçağının içindeki tanıtım çekimleri sırasında uçağın pencereleri aşırı sıcaktan eridi. Kamera ve spot ışıklarının sıcaklığına pencere dayanamadı. pic.twitter.com/YoAAK8uGXd
Images of United’s new livery hit the internet last night before the official “reveal” today in Chicago. The new paint scheme drops the gold elements from the look and replaces them with different blues.
For all the hype that United was trying to generate around the new livery, overall it appears like a very minor change done poorly. Here are some quick thoughts:
The “logo” is still the globe, just simplified. United and their partners in this branding had a chance to re-imagine the globe and give us something new, but for whatever reason, they doubled down on it.
The blue looks “cheap”. The particular blue that United chose for their name and around the engines has a tone to it that looks odd. Maybe it is the light in the hanger, but the color seems like something I’d see on a bad ad for hair care products.
There is a ton of white. The look is minimalist but it seems overly so.
There is nothing that stands out. I think this is the thing that bothers me the most. There was a real opportunity to do something interesting and new but United went the opposite direction, playing it as safe as they could while getting a “new” look.
There was a large release by United a while back on new uniforms, onboard amenities, etc. that incorporated plum and other hues of purple and it is disappointing that with the new livery they steered clear of including those colors. At the end of the day though, it is just paint. I fly inside of the plane. What I would really like to see is United focus on their soft product and customer service. Start delivering on those things and I think people will forget what colors are painted on the plane and just remember it by the name and the service they receive.
Officials from the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport are trying to find the owners of a plane that has been parked on the tarmac, without moving, for years.
Airport director Elena Mayoral submitted an official notice to the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the official gazette of the Kingdom of Spain, informing the nation of a plane in an “obvious state of abandonment” at the airport.
Once the official notice goes out, the owner has three months to get in touch with the airport otherwise the plane will be sold off at auction.
United announced today that they will be offering free DirecTV service on all 211 Boeing 737s that have the television service.
Just in time for the Big Game, United Airlines today announced that effective immediately more than 100 channels of live television will now be free on 211 Boeing 737 United aircraft equipped with seat back TV, making viewing easy gate-to-gate. In addition to offering free live DIRECTV at more than 30,000 seats, United customers also have access to hundreds of movies and TV shows available on personal devices through the airline’s collection on the United app – offering customers thousands of hours of programming in total.
While it’s a great news release (American Airlines is doing something similar for the “big game”) it glosses over the fact that United is actively removing the DirecTV equipment from the 737s that are going in for new seats or heavy maintenance. I have not heard details but I do believe the plan is to go to an all personal device streaming setup eventually. This is really an interim step on the way to that goal.
What United really should be focused on is getting Wi-Fi working consistently on their domestic fleet. I have been on a number of flights the last few months where the Wi-Fi has either not worked or been so slow that it was not worth using. I rarely watch any of the live television programming while flying, opting instead to turn it to the inflight map channel. I use my time on planes to read or catch up on work and for the latter, I need working internet. The internet service domestically on United has been abysmal. The international planes, in my experience, have fewer Wi-Fi problems, though I have had a few long flights where the internet was not working from the beginning.
It is one reason I have steered clear of United’s year long Wi-Fi subscription. I am not going to invest cash in something that does not reliably work and that cannot be easily refunded on a per flight basis. A subscription service is great in theory for people who are frequent travelers and United’s pricing for it isn’t awful. But my guess is that the people who have purchased it have not been happy. While Delta and Alaska Wi-Fi on GoGo may not be the fastest, for the most part it works all of the time. That’s the reliability I and others want with United’s inflight internet.
United needs to focus their attention on some of the basic things that makes their product worth flying rather than trying to match Delta in hopes to lure a few more customers with shiny things. I want on-time performance, good schedules, working Wi-Fi, and friendly customer service. Everything else is icing on the cake.
No one owned Club 90 South, and no one paid. Instead, people shared supplies they brought from home (as part of the allocated 125 pounds of luggage per person) or bought from the station store. Bartenders did not earn salaries—only kudos. Broughton started tending bar Fridays and Saturdays, and soon he spent most nights after dinner mixing cocktails and pouring a “disturbing number” of Prairie Fire shots, which Broughton made with tabasco and tequila. He served absinthes from the astrophysics team, Black Seal rum from a Bermudan at McMurdo Base, and Bundaberg rum from an Australian. Mixing his research job with his side hustle, Broughton made cocktails using liquid nitrogen, bringing the haute cuisine trend of molecular mixology to the bottom of the world.
Life at the bottom of the world sounds interesting, to say the least.
“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and we’re even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”
“Facebook is using us. It is actively giving away our information. It is creating an echo chamber in the name of connection. It surfaces the divisive and destroys the real reason we began using social media in the first place – human connection. — It is a cancer.”
“So what happened? In short, the attackers found a way to trick Facebook into issuing them “access tokens” — basically, digital keys — that let them access other users’ accounts as if they were that user. After spotting some unusual activity earlier this month, Facebook realized what was going on on Tuesday evening and subsequently revoked these access tokens before disclosing the hack publicly on Friday — though not before 50 million people were affected.”
The problem is that giving up Facebook is more complicated than simply deleting it and moving on. I know a lot of people say “your real friends have your number, they’ll call or text you” but I have a number of friends who are spread across the globe. Sure a call or a text would be great but with time zones and internet connections, the easiest way to stay in touch is with Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram. Facebook and Instagram give this passive way of communicating and keeping up while WhatsApp is an easy way to have a chat without having to worry about what time it is where my friends are.
Deep down I don’t really care about browsing Facebook for general updates, but for friends that I do like to stay in touch with, it has becoming an easy place to post photos or life updates. Because of that I keep using it. The problem is that Facebook is “easy”. I know, I know, there are alternatives like Telegram, which I do use, or Yammer for groups. But these require another website/login. Facebook is easy for family and friends to upload things, write posts, etc. without having to worry about another service or login and since tons of people already use it, they are instantly connected.
Again, I know what you’re going to say, “the only way to get people to start using other tools is to leave yourself”. You are probably right and I have come very close to just leaving Facebook and relying on this site and Flickr to stay in touch with people. Each time I get close to leaving I see a post from a friend about something awesome in their life or some sad news and I get dragged back in. Maybe it is one of those things where I just cut the Facebook cord and move on. The repercussions get felt later on and maybe they just aren’t that bad.
What would you do? Have you left Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp yet? If so, how has it gone?
San Diego’s network of smart streetlights, which has been rolling out since early 2018, continues to grow. To date, some 2,000 of the sensor-laden devices have begun gathering pictures, sounds, and other data.
So far, the city has focused on the image data, using it to count pedestrians and cars as they move around the city. This data is only just starting to feed into the way the city designs and manages traffic flows, and any consumer applications remain far in the future, says Erik Caldwell, the city of San Diego’s interim deputy chief operating officer for smart and sustainable communities. Officials are still talking through all other possible applications, such as using the streetlights to locate gunshots, track airport noise, or monitor air quality.
The amount of data generated over time will be enormous and San Diego seems to be doing a bit of experimentation to see what kind of applications they can build around that data. And they aren’t alone, Atlanta, Georgia is also embarking on a pilot program to install smart streetlights.
One downside is the maintenance that will be involved with such sensors. Streetlights are important safety devices for cities but if the “smart” piece of them is not reliable over time or through storms, the upkeep might be their downfall.
United Airlines employees will get their first look Wednesday at new uniforms that will soon roll out to all 70,000 of the carrier’s frontline workers.
The new line comes with a distinct look that includes colors like “Pacific Blue,” “Premium Purple,” and “Atlantic Amethyst” — all among a half-dozen hues that United first teased this past August.
I don’t quite understand the aquamarine color scheme and to be honest I am not a huge fan of the rest of the options either. The one style of men’s sports coat is strange, with silver stitching at the pockets, really makes it look dated.
American Airlines Group Inc. would consider barring passengers from changing nonrefundable tickets if Congress limits what carriers can charge for the adjustments, Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker said Tuesday.
This is coming from some legislation making its way through Congress:
Doing away with changes to nonrefundable fares would make airline flights more like baseball games or concerts, where customers aren’t typically reimbursed if they buy tickets and can’t use them. Carriers currently consider the ability to change a nonrefundable ticket as a service that carries a cost. Such fees, which run up to $200, anger many passengers.
The language limiting what carriers can charge for ticket changes is being supported by consumer groups as a bipartisan provision. It is in a version of an aviation-policy bill sponsored by Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Parker called the proposal “really bad for consumers” last week.
I can’t say I blame American Airlines. Change fees have been around since the days of regulated aviation in the U.S. and the only reason I can think of to change the rules now is to appease some percentage of the voting public.
Is a limitation on the cost of change fees good for the consumer? On the surface, it’s easy to say yes, but when you dig into how airlines oversell flights and offer last minute seats or adapt to weather situations, I think the answer becomes a more complex “no”. Maybe Congress should simply focus on the transparency of the fares and underlying fare rules. If it becomes clear what consumers can and cannot do on a fare, rather than having to dig through pages and pages of fare rules, it becomes easier to make decisions.
When my wife made the jump from an iPhone to the Google Pixel 2 we thought everything would be easy. For the most part, everything was. All of her photos, contacts, and other random phone data ported over without issue. But even after following the steps to disable iMessage and move to regular SMS on Google Fi we still have a number of issues. And this is months after the initial move. With Google now pushing forward with Chat, I think this problem is about to get worse before it ever gets better.
The texting landscape before smartphones was pretty straightforward, 140 characters, sent via the SMS protocol to another phone number. Then MMS came along and we could send grainy photos to one another. Then iMessage showed up and things started to fall apart. If you have an iPhone and send a text to another iPhone user (both with iMessage turned on, which it is, by default), that text is sent as an iMessage via Apple’s servers. If one of the users doesn’t have iMessage, then theoretically, there is a check done and the message will be sent as a regular text message (via SMS or MMS, depending on if any media is in the message). If a person used to have iMessage enabled then the waters become even more murky as the iMessage system may swallow the message and never deliver it to the recipient. It sometimes takes sending 2-3 messages to that person before their regular texting kicks in, even if you follow all of the steps to disable iMessage.
Then you enter the Android device texting fiasco and things get even more confusing. Now with Google coming out with Chat and saying that it will fix all of the issues I think the landscape becomes even more rocky. Google’s product will not be end-to-end encrypted, which is surprising and a huge disappointment. One of the things that iMessage has going for it is the fact that Apple never sees the text of your messages, it is always encrypted. Most people don’t care about the government necessarily having access to their texts, but what about people who don’t want their phone used as a weapon against them (an abused child/wife/etc texting for help). The encryption of this data is important and Google dropping the ball is a shortsighted mistake.
This brings up the question of the chat apps that are out there (Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/etc). I have all three installed on my primary phone but really only have experience with WhatsApp and Telegram. Signal is limited to a single device at a time and that’s a flaw to me. I like to be able to send message from my iPad, computer, or phone and not having that capability immediately makes me less likely to use the app.
I prefer Telegram’s interface over WhatsApp but Telegram uses a homegrown encryption method that I don’t think is completely proven and that makes me a little uncomfortable. WhatsApp’s Facebook ties aren’t my favorite, but they do use an encryption standard that is widely recognized.
The key with all of these independent apps is uptake and having friends who use the same application to communicate. If a few of your friends go with Telegram while others use Facebook Messenger and others are on Signal, then everyone just reverts to SMS/MMS and messages get missed and we are back to square one. Ideally, the SMS/MMS protocols would be updated with some “smart” functionality (if a device is an old school flip phone, revert to 140 character maximums). Or, Google would implement end-to-end encryption and large numbers of people would move over to that. I have strong doubts either of those things will happen though and the landscape will just stay fragmented and hard to navigate.
