The FAA does, however, exercise very strict oversight in other areas...

The FAA inspector looked at my random drug testing program to make sure that everything was in place. I [a one-man helicopter charter company] am subject to the same drug testing requirements as United Airlines. I am the drug testing coordinator for our company, so I am responsible for scheduling drug tests and surprising employees when it is their turn to be tested. As it happens, I’m also the only “safety-sensitive employee” subject to drug testing, so basically I’m responsible for periodically surprising myself with a random drug test. As a supervisor, I need to take training so that I can recognize when an employee is on drugs. But I’m also the only employee, so really this is training so that I can figure out if I myself am on drugs. As an employee, I need to take a second training course so that I learn about all of the ways that my employer might surprise me with a random drug test and find out about drug use. But I’m also the employer so really I’m learning about how I might trap myself.

Five minutes after the FAA inspector left, I received a phone call. “I’m from the FAA and we’d like to schedule an audit of your drug testing program.” I remarked that a fully qualified FAA inspector was barely out of the driveway and had just gone through every document that I had on the subject. “He was from the FSDO (Flight Standards District Office)? That’s a completely different department. We’re going to send two inspectors up from Atlanta next month.” Why two? “We always send them in pairs.” What did they want? “We’re going to fax you a detailed list of all of the information that we need and you should immediately contact your drug testing provider (Lexis/Nexis) to tell them that you’re being audited. There is a bunch of information that you can get only from them. As soon as you get the fax, you should re-fax it to Lexis/Nexis.” I said that I didn’t have a fax machine, so he promised to send the information via U.S. mail. It could not be emailed.

https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/06/16/revitalizing-the-...

I'm in tears reading this, what an excellent article, thank you for sharing

This sounds like a rant by Tommy Saxondale.

Lexis/Nexis does drug testing ?

It's a part of their employee screening solutions.

What does lexis/nexis not do?

are they as grossly incompetent, infuriating and without a grain of common sense as much as First Advantage?

I'm fairly certain that 'gross incompetence' is a core value in this sector.

>The FAA does, however, exercise very strict oversight in other areas...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Drug testing of pilots is regulatory capture now?

Is there anything left that an HN commenter won't describe as regulatory capture or rent-seeking?

Is there any part of our leviathan government left which does not indulge special interest groups and rent seekers, or mire citizens in mystifying, stultifying bureaucracy?

I've personally interacted somewhat deeply with the SSA/HHS (helping with medical care for a grandfather), my state's Department of Education (trying to start up an independent school), administrative local law enforcement (obtaining a seller's license for liquor while in college for a job), and several city/town/village councils/boards (planning/permitting local events).

For all my interfaces with the state, my answer to that question is still, "no, I've yet to find a single part of government which doesn't do some or all those things." Hell, even the student government at my university did those things.

Maybe HN commenters describe so many things as regulatory capture or rent-seeking because that's what our world is now.

> But it’s enough to give clients both anonymity and coveted US registration for their planes

Well, a US registration is "coveted" because of fairly reasonable and light regulation for GA (general aviation) aircraft (and the pilots who fly them [1]). Other jurisdictions (EU) are cracking down on N-registered planes based in their territory, though. It's not like the US registration is prestigious or hard to get or anything.

However, as it happens, only US persons may register a plane in the US (don't quote me on the exact terms, IANAL). That means that if you want to operate an N-registered airplane as a foreigner, you have to go through a trust (or some other legal construction, IANAL). That's why there's a cottage industry for those, and I suppose criminals tag along happily.

[1]: The Chicago convention established (a long time ago, after WW II) that every country ("contracting party") would have a register of aircraft, and a register of pilots ("airmen"), and that a pilot of one country with an aircraft registered in the same country could fly in that country, of course, and also all other contracting parties. So, if there's an N-registered plane (i.e., an aircraft registered in the US) based in Europe or Asia, a pilot with an FAA license (i.e., an airman registered in the US) can fly it.

A pilot from country A can fly a plane from country A in country A (of course) and B and C and all other countries (by Chicago convention), but can't fly a plane from country B in country A or B necessarily (there are exceptions) or country C or any other country.

As FAA rules for pilots are fairly reasonable and benign, a good number of (non-commercial) pilots internationally likes to fly on a FAA license in N-registered planes.

My understanding was that 2 out of 3 of the pilot certificate, the airplane registration, and the country had to match.

Mine are N-registered and based in the US, but if I ever took one to Europe, you can be damn sure I'd keep it on a N-reg. Europe's regulations are positively insane where ours are just slightly daft.

Not generally, it depends on the country, from what I gather. Can’t fly with an FAA license in a German plane in Germany.

It’s funny, you can fly a German plane with a German license in Germany (safe, apparently), and an American plane with an American license (safe), but not a German plane with an American license or vice versa, AFAIK.

Some countries make exceptions - I believe it was ok to fly a UK plane in the UK with a FAA license (but then you couldn’t fly it to Germany, while with a US plane or UK license you could).

> Can’t fly with an FAA license in a German plane in Germany.

I used to fly a British registered aeroplane (G-reg) in Britain, with an Australian licence. However, I couldn't fly that same aeroplane over the channel to France. For that, I'd need a British licence.

This was mid-2000s. Don't know if regulations have changed since.

There is only a title page that I cannot scroll in chrome. I'm not willing to turn off ad blockers, debug this site, or use a different browser to read the story.

You have the right to prevent your browser from downloading certain content, or running certain scripts (in this case ads).

The site also has the right to prevent you from viewing their content without compensation (in this case, through ads).

Of course it is probably not intentional on their part, they probably have never tested with an adblocker. Even if they were aware of the issue, I can't imagine it being very high priority.

You're assuming that the problem is caused by ad blockers, not by over-reliance on JavaScript, insufficient testing, or other poor web design. Anti-adblocker software usually announces itself, in my experience; the goal is to get people to turn off their ad blockers, not leave entirely.

I have seen many websites which core functionality is broken by adblockers. The Vodafone website in the U.K. is a good example, you can't login to the client area with an ad blocker on. Just plain bad design, not necessarily malice.

My work firewall prevents a lot of things from coming through. In this case, I can get to the content itself, but background images don't scroll properly, and such.

Maybe they've got ads, maybe not. I can't tell. What I can tell is that they've stupidly over-complicated "display text and pictures on a scrolling page".

As a work-around, I'm looking at their content through some kind of archive site that someone else in the thread posted. If they'd just hosted their own stuff, it would've come through, ads and all.

It's not just unecessarily complicated, it makes the page unpleasant and hard to read.

And?

Correctly making webpages is of concern here.

You write that as if my comment was the only one from someone with difficulty loading the webpage.

I'm not dismissing the fact that other people had problems, but all due to adblockers. So if you want to read the article, but aren't willing to do anything about working around the fact that the page has problems with certain ones, how does that add to the discussion about the article?

Specifically the comment that you replied "And?" to, I think makes valid points. You have the right to block ads, but the BG also has the right to block people who block ads.

Finally, how can they be reasonably expected to test a custom page against many different adblockers, all of which alter the structure of the DOM; In addition to being actively hostile to their goal, which is to be compensated for their work.

> I'm not dismissing the fact that other people had problems, but all due to adblockers

That's not true. Others can view it in safari with adblocker on, in lynx, in ff with noscript, etc. The problem isn't an adblocker but that the site doesn't work with commonly found browsers.

> So if you want to read the article, but aren't willing to do anything about working around the fact that the page has problems with certain ones, how does that add to the discussion about the article?

That's a far better question. When I made my comment, the page was 100% comments about people not being able to read the webpage. There were about 10 comments at the time. So, the page that I posted to was a list of all the ways that people tried to read the webpage and couldn't. In that way, my comment, and every other comment on the hn page, were made to list how the web page didn't work in order for someone to find a way that the page could be viewed, without people having to change their browsing configurations. That continued until someone one person posted how to use textise and another used archive.is to view the page. Normally I use archive.org or google cache instead of archive.is, but this site wasn't in those caches at the time.

> Specifically the comment that you replied "And?" to, I think makes valid points. You have the right to block ads, but the BG also has the right to block people who block ads.

Except that nobody disputes the points in the post. It was a truism, which is why I responded, "And?"

> Finally, how can they be reasonably expected to test a custom page against many different adblockers, all of which alter the structure of the DOM; In addition to being actively hostile to their goal, which is to be compensated for their work.

The issue isn't the adblocker but a poorly coded site that doesn't work in all browsers. You are making assumptions that simply aren't true. I'm not hostile to a website making money. That's just a strawman.

Add to that, there's a popup asking for my email address for their mailing list as soon as I start to scroll. Seriously, has anyone ever entered their email address in order to get rid of a popup instead of clicking "X"? Is there a more sinister purpose to these boxes? I note that users without Nuke Anything (or similar) installed in their browser will have to click whatever button the designer chose, and its associated tracking code, to close the popup.

I really hate that too; but apparently the conversion rates and return on those things is huge.

FWIW, it's somewhat readable for my work JavaScript disabled.

Thanks! I can't read it in chrome with JS disabled, but I can read the first box if I go into dev tools. Then I can scroll when the mouse is over the text box.

See also:

https://www.textise.net/

It's remarkably handy and I use it more often than I'd expect.

It also works quite well to read the article through Lynx.

I do sometimes browse in Lynx. I'm not even ashamed to admit it.

I also will sometimes use a browser that is graphical but doesn't support much, such as Midori. If you're a Windows user, there is an obscure browser called OffByOne and I used to use that one on a regular basis.

For much of my browsing, I don't need much more than text. Sometimes, I do like images. I'll use a lightweight browser for that.

On my tablet, like I am now, I have zero non-default apps installed, and don't intend to add any. So, I'll make use of the linked site, or similar, when I find a page that I want to see and it won't behave well for Safari.

It's kind of nice to browse the web with one of the lightweight browsers. Links2 also works, as does elinks, for lightweight experiences. I think both have Windows builds and links2 can be found pre-compiled with https support - I'm pretty sure. OffByOne is the one I generally recommend. I don't think it has ever actually had a security vulnerability. I'm not sure how many people use it, but it probably totals in the double digits!

I don't actually remember how I found OffByOne? I think I may have been looking to include a basic browser in an application I was making for myself. They do have a free stand-alone product, but it wasn't open source when I last looked. That was ages ago.

This works great! Thanks for sharing it.

Works fine in Safari; AdBlock turned on.

Thanks!

While many social evils, like the ones mentioned in the article, can be stopped when we end privacy, profound harm can be caused by doing so as well.

In a democratic society, the end of privacy means we are all fully at the mercy of the majority. When the majority errs, our freedom and even our lives can be lost. Privacy is the check against that unimaginably large systemic risk.

The piece doesn't even look at the other side of the privacy argument. That highly placed opinion makers like the authors of this article can write such a one sided article about privacy just goes to show that we could very well end up in a situation where the majority is steered in a terribly destructive direction.

1) Plurality not majority.

2) The end of privacy means you are at the mercy of a minority not a majority, possibly a minority of one.

I'm giving the anti-privacy camp the benefit of doubt and assuming we can create a democratic system in which the will of the majority is reflected. Even then, giving up almost all forms of meaningful privacy could end up being terribly dangerous.

Visit it from an archive: http://archive.is/uTdNq

Thank you! That makes it much more legible!

> The FAA has a reputation for making change at a snail’s pace even when problems are clearly identified: The agency, for example, still doesn’t put a photo of the pilot on airman’s licenses 13 years after Congress called for it.

Yeah, well, but you have to carry a valid photo ID with your pilot's license when you fly, so what's the big deal? (somebody with the same name and birth date and size could fly with your license?)

I don't know, they seem to have moved relatively fast about drones.

Perhaps the FAA moves slowly because A) they don't want to break things that people's lives depend upon and B) they react to actual problems rather than breathless prose.

Exactly, they can move fast if they have to.

All in all, my impression is that the FAA regulates with a light touch, yes, but quite sensibly. If I'm not mistaken, they actually also have a dual mandate, to 1) regulate and 2) promote aviation. [That's why accident investigations are handled independently by the NTSB.]

However, the general aviation lobby in the US (AOPA = Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, NBAA = National Business Aviation Association, etc.) is pretty strong. It's great flying privately in the US, really - in socialist Europe, the you have to pay for ATC, landing fees, etc., while in the USA it's all paid for by the taxpayer :-)

Finally, regarding "breathless prose":

> the public urgently needs to know whether there are other potential terrorists among the thousands of unknown individuals who control US-registered planes.

That seems ridiculous. I assume that Terrorists won't go buy a plane for their terrorism, they'll rent or hijack one, in particular if you want to fly it into something. Drug smugglers, on the other hand, as also mentioned in the piece, might want to have access to their own planes. However, they don't lend themselves quite so easily to breathless policy making ("urgently needs to know") as terrorists and "think about the children".

The FAA's dual mandate was dropped with the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 1996 after the ValueJet 592 crash.

There is a federal aviation fuel tax that partially funds ATC, I pay a lot of landing fees out of pocket in the US, and there are fees added to airline tickets, some of which pay for regulatory items [though many of which are BS]. It's not all paid by the taxpayers.

I agree that the US is a flyer's paradise compared to Europe. I suspect there might be more general aviation flights on a given day in Florida than there are GA flights in all of Europe on that day.

> they seem to have moved relatively fast about drones

So much so that they introduced the flagrantly illegal drone registration program.

First, the FAA weren't really moving that fast about drones until idiots started flying drones in active fire control areas. Once planes and helicopters started needing to be grounded in active fire control areas because of morons with drones, regulation was inevitable.

Second, airspace is controlled. If you want to put something in it, you need permission. I wish you luck with your quest to deregulate airspace.

Third, drones were effectively unregulated for quite a while. And the drone users somehow couldn't police themselves--sorry that your libertarian utopia ran aground on the shoals of human stupidity.

Fourth, yeah, I'm sorry if your libertarian sensibilities get offended, but when, not if, your drone comes crashing into something I own, I want to know to whom I need to send the bill. Your right to operate a drone impinges on my right to know who is damaging my property. No regulation implies that I surrender my right over my property and you have given me very little justification why your flying lawnmower should receive such treatment.

I'm not advocating anarcho-capitalism, I'm just saying the drone registration program is illegal. And that's not a dig on the FAA. They felt that drones were a real problem so I think they did it even though they knew would get struck down, because they didn't have the time to get something through congress.

I would like more legal clarity in flying drones, and I personally take safety seriously. In fact, my drone still has my F number label attached :-)

I think they need something more robust, because as it stands now, anyone with a couple hundred dollars can walk out of a best buy with something that can do real harm. And for people like me who take safety seriously, it's hard to find places to fly because of the jumbled patchwork of rules in different states, cities and parks.

Can you elaborate on what's illegal about it? I honestly don't know but it's an interesting topic.

It violates (IANAL) the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, section 336 [1]: "... the Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft ...".

The drone registration program was struck down in court in May [2].

I recommend this podcast with the plaintiff in the case: https://dronelawtoday.com/2017/06/05/the-taylor-case/

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ95/PLAW-112publ95.pdf

[2]: https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/federal-court-strik...

Great, thanks. That seems like a reasonable rule. I'm sure the FAA can still limit hobbyist activity around airports just like we can't shoot rockets or fly kites near airports. Is that the case or does that fall to others?

Yes, that’s correct. They only have authority to regulate when you’re flying commercially or outside the bounds of safe hobbyist flight. For example, if you want to fly over 400 feet or in controlled airspace, you need a waiver from the FAA to do that.

how is this different from a the privacy afforded by a US license plate on a car?

It's pretty similar to that really.