Elon Musk Asks College Kid To Remove Twitter-Bot Tracking Private Jet

[Ogre]

My guess, Elon will pay the kid the money but before he does he'll make him sign an NDA. My guess is Elon doesn't want everyone to know he'll pay lots of money to get you to quit something he doesn't like. We'll all try to find our way of annoying him and then tell him "I'll stop for a Model 3".

Also, the kid needs to learn to negotiate. Elon lowballed with the $5k offer. Kid should have started with at least Model S Plaid.

There isn’t a ton of value in paying the kid off.

This is public data he is rebroadcasting. When this guy shuts off his tracker, it’s entirely possible someone else would make a new one.

Right now since there is an easy public tracker, nobody has incentive to build another one. If this one goes down, how long before another comes up?

 

[Ogre]

I’m dismayed by the cognitive dissonance of claiming the right to spread a deadly disease as “freedom” while balking at the freedom of speech.

Society protects our freedoms, but demands our cooperation in return. Are traffic lights impinging on our freedoms, or codifying a mutual agreement for us to value each other’s lives?

I don’t hold these two contradicting views so I’m not sure who you might be talking about.

There are companies who drive around with license plate readers. All they do is go to public lots and drive down the roads scanning plates. Then upload this data to a common database and police agencies, bounty hunters, and repo agencies buy access to this database.

Now imagine someone bought access to this database and started publishing a tracker for you, your spouse, or someone you care for who perhaps has people who really don’t like them who might use that information for harm.

Is that freedom of speech?

To me just the idea of tracking people and broadcasting it is creepy and shouldn’t fall under freedom of speech. It is much like yelling fire in a crowded theatre, there is potential for harm.

As I mentioned above, Musk has the resources to work around this. I still think it’s questionable, but he can get over it. I just don’t like the principal here. I also think this is shows poor character and decision making on the kid’s part, but people make stupid choices all the time.

 

[Crissa]

As I indicated earlier " Vaccines are important, but we need logical and scientifical policies. I have the two vaccines + the buster. Nurses in Canada are not mandated to be vaccinated, but truckers are because it has to do with Federal control of borders not Canadian labor laws, which the unions for nurses are protecting."

Is that a fair policy about the truckers as a group?

I think it is a political policy using power (border control) as an opportunity to "take action" against a group of vulnerable workers. To be fair, all school teachers and nurses should also be mandated to be vaccinated, if we follow the same logic. I think there is a much deeper debate going on right now. I think Elon is right again.

Vulnerable workers should be vaccinated.

It's a fallacy to argue about nurses, since that's a Provincial issue, not a Federal one. 'Oh no, look over there' is a standard dishonest argument.

Crossing the border is what spreads the disease, so of course those crossing should be vaccinated (and lower the amount of disease crossing the border).

It's a dishonest argument by dishonest people.

-Crissa

 

[CyberGus]

To me just the idea of tracking people and broadcasting it is creepy and shouldn’t fall under freedom of speech. It is much like yelling fire in a crowded theatre, there is potential for harm.

Cyberstalking is a creepy behavior that puts lives at risk.
Indifference to spreading a deadly disease is a creepy behavior that puts lives at risk.

The comment was not directed at @Ogre. I'm frustrated that often people scream "The government can't tell me what to do!" until someone does something they don't like and then "Hey, the government should tell them what to do".

 

[CyberGus]

Also, the kid needs to learn to negotiate. Elon lowballed with the $5k offer. Kid should have started with at least Model S Plaid.

The kid should have countered with "keep your money, I'll take an internship". Pure gold.

 

[ZARDOZ]

It’s creepy. Elon asked him to stop. Kid refused and that’s the end of that. I think it went well.

 

[lslick23]

There's a public database of flights because airports need to communicate between each other and because planes crashing into one another or falling out of the sky needs to be tracked. A small jet has the potential to destroy an entire neighborhood in a couple minutes or smash into another aircraft.

-Crissa

Crissa,

Respectfully you don’t understand how the national airspace system works and aviation as a whole. There are towered controlled and untowered airports and not all aircraft are tracked because there are other types of airspace with different rules. Even “jets” can take off from an airport and nobody will know who they are and where they are going. If you are VFR (Visual flight rules) then you cant be tracked unless your the military doing it. If you don’t have a flight plan with a squawk code then your a ghost as simple as that.

 

[Bill906]

Crissa,

Respectfully you don’t understand how the national airspace system works and aviation as a whole. There are towered controlled and untowered airports and not all aircraft are tracked because there are other types of airspace with different rules. Even “jets” can take off from an airport and nobody will know who they are and where they are going. If you are VFR (Visual flight rules) then you cant be tracked unless your the military doing it. If you don’t have a flight plan with a squawk code then your a ghost as simple as that.

Athough technically true, I doubt a busy man like Elon can be burdened with the restrictions VFR Imposes. It is not always beautiful clear skies between Fremont and Austin below 18,000MSL.

 

[lslick23]

Athough technically true, I doubt a busy man like Elon can be burdened with the restrictions VFR Imposes. It is not always beautiful clear skies between Fremont and Austin below 18,000MSL.

I wasn’t speaking about Elon and his Jet specifically on this one. I’ve flown around the Bay Area and Austin many times and yes you need to know when to fly and avoid the haze.
But with his money for example he can have shares with Netjets an Flexjet which gives him access to hundreds of aircraft. So he could play a shell game of planes and airports that would make it impossible to know where he is going. Trust me I know from experience of flying billionaires and how they operate for security purposes.

 

[Crissa]

Crissa,

Respectfully you don’t understand

That's pretty disrespectful as it doesn't disagree with anything I said. And skipping the rules by always marking you transponder 'inop' is not going to go over well.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

Yes, you can fly a lot of places without a flight plan filed in advance by just flying VFR. But not into Class A and Class B airspace where Musk often lands. You also can’t cross international borders without filing a flight plan. There are a pile of other thing which are far less convenient and you can’t fly higher than 18,000 feet without a flight plan which most jets tend to do.

If you want reliable, fast, efficient travel, you are flying at altitudes where VFR flights are not legal. Unless you have the luxury of timing your travel, you are flying through weather which isn’t VFR legal.

Musk is not going to deal with the limits of VFR for his travel plans. For him, it’s almost certainly far simpler to just increase security at the destination and take some other precautions.

 

[Stuck4ger]

There's a public database of flights because airports need to communicate between each other and because planes crashing into one another or falling out of the sky needs to be tracked. A small jet has the potential to destroy an entire neighborhood in a couple minutes or smash into another aircraft.

-Crissa

Although it may be interesting, I don’t think the public having access to air traffic data is required for safe separation of traffic.ATC having access to data is.

 

[lslick23]

That's pretty disrespectful as it doesn't disagree with anything I said. And skipping the rules by always marking you transponder 'inop' is not going to go over well.

-Crissa

Crissa,

I’m really not trying to be mean or disrespectful, but your comment above is incorrect and shows your lack of knowledge of the rules of the aviation industry. And trust me nobody knows all the rules of aviation because it’s written in gibberish and lawyer government talk anyways.

 

[Crissa]

Crissa,

I’m really not trying to be mean or disrespectful, but your comment above is incorrect and shows your lack of knowledge of the rules of the aviation industry. And trust me nobody knows all the rules of aviation because it’s written in gibberish and lawyer government talk anyways.

...And yet not a thing I said is incorrect. This is why flight plans are public data. As Ogre said, it's possible to restrict it, but we don't, and in some ways maybe we shouldn't. We should make more data available - like say, every time police officers use their lights or make stops - and other details not, like, say, identifying marks on real time data.

And yes, the rules are written in gibberish - the national security laws which aren't even public are an abomination.

-Crissa

 

[CyberGus]

Musk is not going to deal with the limits of VFR for his travel plans.

VFR did not work out very well for Kobe