kevinelliott

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Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing.

That's right! ACARS has some very interesting information in it.

Just a few things of notable interest:

- realtime routing plans/changes

- OOOI (out/off/on/in) revealing when an airframe takes off or lands

- departure, destination airports and gates

- weather and other flight bag data

- airline / flight crew communication

- flight crew / airport communication

- positional data (which can be useful to augment or verify when ADS-B data is not available)

It has been a time consuming process to do research on some of the extended text (see: https://github.com/airframesio/acars-message-documentation), but we hope to keep at it.

Ahoy! Thanks to whoever posted a link to Airframes here on HN. I'm the founder of the project.

It's been a bit of a crazy 24 hours, and I haven't had enough time to fully surface and understand the impact that the ADSB Exchange sale has on everyone, the community, and Airframes.

Most of the Airframes effort has been fairly heads down, built in a tiny corner of the community and was not prepared for the events of the last day. Until now, most people weren't even familiar with technologies such as ACARS or VDL, limited to a mostly a small cross section of the community.

It has been a careful and deliberate effort to grow feeders & ingests slowly due to the nature of the data and infrastructure/storage needed, from both discovery (figuring out the data structures) and process (how to make use of it) perspectives. Requiring much of the efforts on the backend that the currently simple web app does not exactly reveal.

A new web app in development (there are some obvious and glaring issues/quirks with it now), and several other components, such as a desktop app, a mobile app, and a multi-architecture radio-focused OS to easily setup feeders (to Airframes, and the other aggregators) that will expand to other radio interests in time. There has been a lot of preliminary work on each of these.

The plan is to open source much of this over time.

If there is interest, I'm happy to elaborate more. I have been very transparent about the development process and implementations on the Discord in realtime. You are welcome to explore the dev channels there to get more background in the meantime.

Note that due to current events, I am taking on higher traffic than usual, unexpectedly, and everyone is still trying to understand what the impact of the recent events are.

This is correct. It was there to show some value early on, but a complete redesign has been in the works for a couple of months now.

Hey, I'm Kevin (founder of Airframes), and I'd like to give some background here.

While the world has been obsessing about ADS-B, which is primarily focused on positional data, I've been building a platform that is heavily focused on ACARS (often referred to as Plain Old ACARS), VDL (the successor to ACARS), HFDL (HF-based, also containing ACARS payloads), and SATCOM (such as AoA - ACARS over Insmarsat, and AoI - ACARS over Iridium).

The information in ACARS is quite interesting, and reveals significantly more about flights than ADS-B alone. The goal of the project has always been to provide a fuller picture of what is flying, including OOOI, routing, equipment status, fuel details, and more.

Some very early feeders and enthusiasts have been feeding data and supporting the effort, and as many/most HN folks know, this is all very time consuming.

Let me respond to your points too:

1. I'm a strong supporter of open source, and conceptually even open data. Your assessment that most of the stuff is still private is true. This is a strategic decision I have made. Having watched the aggregator space for many years now, my concern was that since we're still getting things built out (and I'm the only developer), a heavily budgeted competitor (such as FlightAware) could come along and enter the ACARS space long before we were ready and make the effort pointless.

I do plan to continue to open source and open data, and as it makes sense to, at my own expense, I will do so. Especially as more people become involved and build interest in ACARS.

2. The roadmap on the trello has not been updated, because, there were very few people interested in the effort and did not really engage in using it. But there is most definitely a roadmap -- some of the things are related to API, desktop/mobile app, a radio-focused OS (initially aimed at making it easy to feed to Airframes and other aggregators, but with the goal of wider radio interests) similar to OctoPi for OctoPrint.

3. Documentation has been in the works. But, seeing as that I have a lot of priorities (and it's mostly just me at the moment), it's not complete. I was hoping to release it when more digestible/ready. https://docs.airframes.io

4. I would hope that folks do consider supporting the effort, and there are a lot of big plans for it in the ACARS space.

Also, to put it bluntly, we were not yet ready for the events that unfolded. So there are some growing pains to deal with there.

I have Mercury. I like it. I’ll be moving my two Azlo accounts to it.

I have been making a living building Rails apps for over a decade. It’s never too late, and while Rails is no longer the cool kid on the block, it is worth learning because:

1. There’s still a market for it. It shines at early stage, and plenty of companies like it, and the community is still decent (even though the energy of the early days is gone).

2. Many other newer frameworks and languages have borrowed many concepts from Rails and Ruby. Your learnings will translate!

3. It’s not all about money. Yes, you can make great money working with Ruby and Rails, but it’s a fun language and framework that cares about developer happiness (though, yes, there’s unhappy areas). So pick a language and framework that makes you enjoy your day. That’s why I have worked with Ruby so long.

4. Diversify. It’s not just about one language and framework. Learn other things too. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (as it sounds like you kind of have with PHP). I particularly love learning Go, Dart, TypeScript, Vuejs, Nestjs, Swift, etc. Those are just a few. The point here is you learn the fundamentals in ways you will carry to whatever your future in programming will bring by taking some learnings from each one.

5. If you don’t actually enjoy learning new languages maybe consider another career? Not saying you should drop out of programming, but do what you love. We have one life to live. As cliche as that sounds, it’s true!

Uhhhh... heh slightly humorous.

I too use to go to the 2600 meets at the Embarcadero in SF and go trashing.

Good call. Didn't want to make it too pixelated, but since it's a background image we can probably reduce. Any other thoughts here?

Otherwise known as fixed bid.

This is dangerous, in most cases, because clients are not looking out for you -- by definition they look out for themselves. It is not in your best interest to offer a fixed bid because undoubtedly problems out of your control will arise, and you are on the hook for it.

Furthermore, since the client is not always benevolent, you may be expected to implement changes outside of the scope of the contract, and this can often sour the relationship when you explain that it can't be done in the fixed bid you supplied. If you were upfront about a time and materials (T&M) beyond the agreement of the fixed bid, then you can protect yourself from this situation.

Unfortunately what most engineers tend to misunderstand about the role of their manager is that there are responsibilities outside of the team itself that the manager must perform.

Most managers are in simply supervisory roles, to watch over the team and ensure it's functioning, surviving, and thriving. That is what a supervisor or lead is for. While managers are certainly responsible for nurturing and growing their teams efficiently, they're also highly concerned with managerial duties to the company, which can often be unseen or misunderstood by their direct reports.

Managers often have responsibilities to the management team, the executive team, and other departments entirely. Take an IT department for example. All of the other departments in the company, including operations (where IT often sits to avoid conflict with engineering, and because largely it's an operational focus), are its internal clients, and the management in IT must work with the management of all other departments.

Meanwhile, IT engineers (sysadmins, devops, etc) often under recognize that this intricate dance is going on. The executive team will put pressures on the department, and the manager must delicately balance their needs with what the needs of the team are as well.

Thus, the engineer often looks for a manager that focuses solely on the team. But long term, the manager ends up having to account for the needs of the company. Any manager will need to do this.

It's ultimately important that the staff understands that their manager is superior to them simply because the position requires this of them (not necessarily because of any inherent skill advances). To look for an equal out of your manager is and will continue to be an exercise in futility.

The simple fact that if your startup has minimal capital (if any at all) and no revenue should indicate that spending a small fortune (potentially $2,500-10,000) to travel to a week long party (that's what SXSW is anyway) will only put you further into the debt hole that you need to make up for later. Who cares if you make $5,000 later on, because you're effectively still negative.

Some of these ego-whores are at every meetup, conference, mixer, breakfast, etc. Imagine how much of the startup's capital they are effectively wasting. All in the favor of "networking" --- 90% of which never pans out because most people at these events are all talk.

Sure, the events are fun, but they're not as productive as hunkering down and writing some code, reaching out to a potential customer, showing off a demo, or reviewing some feedback.

Hell yes! Well said. This makes me feel much less jealous of all the conference hoes running around acting like you need to be at a conference to get great things done.

Thank you!

Good idea, I need to sync the About page with the front page. The copy should be consistent and clear! Yes, the primary purpose of the site is to collaboratively learn topics, but there's no reason you need to do it with other people if you want to stay siloed.

I considered having the Add button below resources, but after you have 5 or 6 lists, the button disappears down the page. Haven't figured out a good solution for that yet. I looked into the button not working, and the bug is that it works on the list's page, but not on the manage page. Thanks!

I looked on other sites, and it seems pretty common to separate your profile settings (how people see your profile, etc) from your account settings (username, password, email). Any thoughts on how to make it more clear?

You're reading my mind. I already have a "next resource in list" feature, but have disabled it in the UI until it's complete. Also, there will be a way to do this on the dashboard across multiple lists, but I haven't come up with a good algorithm that users can control to determine what resources from which lists to do next. That might be overkill.

Really appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I am polite to recruiters. I never know when they might put me in touch with an early stage hire, even if it's out of scope from what they're doing now. Also, you never know when you're looking to scale and having some relationships in place can be helpful.

Don't forget, that even though they can be annoying and a bit out of touch with what position reqs actually are, they're human too, and a little short but polite response about your situation can go a long way.

I'm a long time HN lurker, and wanted to show a side project that I recently started working on that I think has some merit.

If you're an avid learner who is working on lots of different topics at any given time, as I know most HN folks are, you know that keeping track of what you are learning, the resources (books, tutorials, articles, courses, etc), and your progress along the way is difficult to do. LearnTribe solves this problem by providing a social way to organize and track your learning efforts.

I'd especially appreciate some honest, but constructive criticism about the concept and implementation. Note that the site is lacking a real design treatment (mood, colors, logo, etc) and needs a look at UX. I'm hunting for a design partner to take the project to the next level.

And my point about annoying other people was that I certainly could not beg my friends to help a different person every single day. It's not sustainable. I know for certain that every one of my friends would block my emails, social network updates, and phone calls.

I could ask them once, twice, maybe even ten times over the course of a year. But beyond that, it begins to mirror harassment. It's just not sustainable for one person to broadcast that many repetitive messages.

Though, I sure wish I could make the same efforts to tell people about each individual of the thousand other people in need, as I have about Amit.

It's unfortunately, just not realistic :|

I think you misinterpreted what I was saying.

I do not know the names, locations, or other pieces of information about the thousands of other people who are also in need. We know Amit. Without knowing their names and locations, there is absolutely no way to bring the same class of attention to them. There is no way to build a website highlighting one of the thousands of other people, nor is there a way to make it personable and striking to others to get involved.

Amit is lucky because he has a community of people who are making excellent efforts to find him a match. That's fantastic!

The guilt comes in when I know that it's just not possible (or sustainable) to do the same thing for all of the other people in his shoes.

I am a little sad that my message was misinterpreted and it sounded like I was full of "selfulness" --- but I'm hoping it was just a miscommunication.

That's true. In my case, the emotion gives me an opportunity to reflect and determine a course of action.

My original intention for discussing my guilt was that I know it's a common feeling, and I wonder why so many people take action/interest for high profile cases. It's likely the overwhelming sense of apathy towards "saving the world" that people zoom in on particular people that they're familiar with.

But I still can't help feeling guilty for trying to help someone I know, versus a very needy person I don't. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to not feel this way. Ignoring the emotion only seems to bury it, only for it to resurface in the future (similar to your guilt->apathy->guilt cycle). One thing is sure though, even after I help someone, I still feel the sense of guilt and frustration that pairs knowing the rest of the world is still in need.

Like you said, any progress, no matter how small, is good!

How will you sustain a "free storage" site without any income? Surely you must be charging someone for something.

If not, it leads me to believe you might do something with our data to make money. I don't want to jump to conclusions, so it might be a better idea if you just tell us how you plan to capitalize on the service before we upload our content!

Yep, this is exactly where my guilt comes in. What am I doing to help any of those millions of starving children? Very little.

So many people have told me throughout my life that I need to just ignore it, and you can't save the world. I can't help but think that's just their way of trying to invalidate any guilt of their own, even if they're right that it's not possible to help everyone everywhere.

Though that's why I invest on Kiva, because I can help make an impact in a "starving" part of the world helping to build up economies so the people can take care of themselves, rather than solely relying on financial donations.

I am ignoring those people. Amit's high profile presence has made me think about the problem more, but I have not gone out of my way to see if any other people might be in need.

Sure, my registration in the database will help to match me against other people in need, but it doesn't inform me of people who are in need that I don't match.

See, that's what I mean. I feel guilty that I can't tell others about the thousands of people who are also in need. And really, even if I knew who all these other people were, my friends and family would get terribly annoyed that I would be telling them all about hundreds or thousands of other people in need.

See the problem? We care about Amit because he's high profile (and I'm glad we are trying!), but we do very little for the more 'anonymous' types. That's where my guilt comes in.

I feel absolutely helpless. I hate this situation. I don't know anyone who qualifies, and I certainly don't. The idea that Amit may not find a donor furiously irritates me. What's worse, none of my Facebook and Twitter followers have relayed the message further the several times I've posted about it.

Then there's the swab kit sign up form. Oh my, what a pain. And then the guilt sets in where I begin to think 'Why am I ignoring the thousands of other people that likely need bone marrow too?'

I can't be alone in this thinking. But what can I do next? I certainly can't sit idle and watch this guy die.

The story was fascinating. What is most interesting to me is that several people here on HN are dumbfounded by how such a simple service was in such demand. That seems to be the trend these days: do something simple, that everyone needs, and you can be a success. Complicated ideas don't seem to fair well (there is a lot of resistance to it anyway). If people need to try and figure out what you're offering, you've already lost most people.

Looking forward to the release of View!

Nice to see someone has my line of thinking. I'm sure we're not alone. It's probably just not trendy to talk about the valley the way we have.

I like it here, a lot, but I find it very hard to find people who actually have the same product building interests. Plenty of people who like the same tools (RoR, iOS, JS, etc) but much more difficult to find people who are as passionate about X and Y as you are.

It's not fair to offer that comparison after we've already been exposed to our own cultures. Of course now that we've had technology, our social traditions and structure, and advances in science and history, that it would be nearly impossible to WANT to trade places with them.

However, we are a stressed out, overworked, sick society who has lost traditions such as appreciation of family, and our idea of relaxation and "living life" is a 2 week vacation once a year. Sure, we've got great tools and Xboxes and the Internet and modern medicine... but at the end of the day, 100+ million Americans are literally sick (defined by the prescribed medications that over 1 in 3 have to treat symptoms of sickness).

If I had grown up in their tribe, and was given an opportunity to completely understand the pros and cons of the new society, I may just want to stay ignorant in my tribe.

It's quite possible that while they're likely less intelligent, less advanced and very primitive, but happy and connected with each other and have a quality of life that comparatively (to them) is better than our way of life.

At the end of the day, to me at least, quality of life is what's really important. To others, it's competition, satisfaction of proving that they are better than others, money, and egocentric activities that make them happy (and that's fine).

Don't forget that technology is in itself a drug and nearly impossible for a "simple" mind to resist. To them technology appears as "tools of the Gods"... how could they reject it?

After all that, you have to think... do they really have the self-driven choice to accept it?