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  • Since covid, the insurance industry has been hemorrhaging people. At my company, most people that 3-4 months before they quit. No one knows what they're doing because of this and many claims are denied/mishandled.

    • Why?

      • A lot of work for "meh" pay. It burns people out, and a lot of people took covid as a chance to change jobs, if not careers. And a lot of companies that put people back in the office lost a ton of people, so if you're insurance company has done that, there's a good chance your" insurance professional" is just some guy sitting in a training class.

        I currently have 260 claims under my name and I'm not the highest. Customers don't like you because insurance is the devil (which I agree with), you have to make decisions that don't feel right because your company is looking for results, and you are harrased via phone, email, and teams. It's just 8 hours a day (minimum) of just back to back to back nonsense and brow beating. And, in the US, almost every state has their own laws and statutes around auto insurance, so keeping track of every difference is overwhelming. Our resources suck so there's a lot you just have to memorize. Because they want people to wear every hat, shit gets missed very, very often. I get fucked up claims all the time.

        And there's no "off." it doesn't slow down or get easier, because the bosses won't let it. They want to have as few people do the most and the quality suffers because of it, and it puts a lot of stress in the employees. Whenever we say anything, we get a "Yeah, that's tough" before they give us more shit.

  • Professional: Self-driving trailers are already a thing. They are not legal on public roads, but they work just fine in warehouses and yards. The way it works, a dolly is hooked up to the front of the trailer, and the yard master just instructs it where to go and park, and forgets about it. Thanks to the trailer sensors, the trailer is also able to navigate around fairly heavy yard traffic, which is far more complex than linear traffic on roads. The EU is being lobbied to allow the trailers on the roads. The EU is also being lobbied to increase the max length of a tractor-trailer from 27m to 50m. The new road trains are also using these autonomous engines and steering directly on trailers. We estimate that by 2035, we'll start seeing a drastic reduction of demand for truck drivers.

    Hobby: This is unconfirmed, just an odd thing I started noticing. In some places, in particular around US embassies, modern cameras are blocked from taking photos, and older models are being interfered with through green lasers. I noticed the latter when I tested with the first gen Gopro Hero and a 15 years old Canon. Need to dig out my film camera to see whether it has any impact there.

  • A pretty huge proposal to expand the Light Sport rule is in the works.

    For those unaware, in 2004 the United States made some pretty sweeping additions to the Federal Aviation Regulations, essentially adding what the rest of the world calls "ultralight aviation." What Americans had been previously calling "ultralights" were more like the rest of the world's "microlights." The Light Sport Rule added the Sport Pilot certificate (lesser privileges than a Private pilot), the Sport Pilot Instructor certificate, two kinds of aircraft repairmen, and two categories of aircraft, Special and Experimental Light Sport.

    The rule has been a resounding success, so they're talking about greatly widening what sport pilots can fly and what can be built and certified as a Light Sport aircraft. They're talking about adding night flight, allowing controllable pitch propellers, retractable landing gear, 4 seats, higher stall speeds, higher takeoff weights, higher cruise speeds, possibly even eliminating the language that requires single engines or reciprocating engines.

    It's possible there's a boom time coming for General Aviation.

    • Related?

      More than 150 technology companies have been working towards developing the vehicles, with a consensus largely forming that the flying taxi of the near future will look something like a drone

      • No, what I'm talking about isn't steaming bullshit fresh from the bovine's ass.

        What is the major complaint people have about electric cars? Range, right? Because lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries do not have the energy density per unit volume or unit weight of gasoline. Electric cars are often heavier than their ICE counterparts because they're crammed with so many batteries to make up for the relative lack of energy density, and they benefit from things like regenerative braking. Electric motorcycles often don't have regenerative braking, which is why Kawasaki is right now advertising a $7000 sport bike with a 55mph top speed (65 if you push the boost button) and a range of 41 miles (if you don't push the boost button). The Ninja 250 I bought in 2007 could do 120mph and I routinely went 300 miles between fill-ups with it's ~5 gallon tank.

        Meanwhile these folks have a hexacopter that will out-carry and out-run a Robinson R-44 piston-powered helicopter, on Lithium batteries.

        Actually just right there, they say a 200 mph cruise speed and a 100 mile range. So that's a 30 minute endurance. To legally fly cross country in the United States, you need to have enough endurance to make it to your first intended point of landing PLUS 30 minutes, and that's day VFR minimum fuel when operating under Part 91. Are you telling me it has an hour of battery life but half of that will be in reserve? In something like a Cessna Skyhawk a half hour of fuel is something like 4 gallons of gasoline, or about 24 pounds. How much lithium battery do you need to make ~100 horsepower for half an hour? And mind you, that's cruise power, NOT takeoff power. Which will be a LOT greater than cruise power especially in a VTOL aircraft. I get that it's a tiltrotor and would have airplane-like performance in cruise, but it'll still be more of a bitch to get airborne than a conventional plane.

        Anybody want to see me plan a 100 mile flight in a Cessna Skyhawk, figure up how much gas the trip would take, convert that amount of gas to kilowatt-hours and then look up the weight of a Li-Ion battery with that capacity?

        I'd also be real interested to know what the secret sauce is to make those propellers that quiet. Yes, electric motors are quieter than gas engines, but the noise from something like an airplane or helicopter is mostly made by the propeller/rotor blades, especially at the tips. By what physics are you going to make something with 6 propellers quieter than something that has one? I bet that thing is going to be louder - and shriller - than an equivalent helicopter. Stand next to a toy drone in flight and explain to me by what magic they're going to make one that seats four make "a barely perceptible sound."

        If you're going to tell obvious lies, just say I'm pretty.

    • Ah yes, bacause we didn't had enough old people crashing already...

      • Light Sport has proven safer than previous "not actually an ultralight but enforcement is lax" or EAB operations. Having a robust training culture including the creation of a new instructor certificate I think is a major contributor to that safety.

        A significant portion of the expansion will be allowing S-LSA airplanes to be used for aerial work such as pipeline patrol or aerial photography. I see no reason whatsoever a Flight Design CT can't be used for a job a Cessna 152 can do. With a much more modern and efficient engine burning unleaded gasoline.

133 comments