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… specifically to women. There is a lot to celebrate in this Facebook Careers video. The description:

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is happening this week in Orlando and we’ll be there. Join Engineering Director Debbie Ferguson on a flight journey as she offers her perspective and career advice from 600 feet in the air.

Ms. Ferguson has been commuting by plane from Sacramento to her office at Facebook. She says that she started the aerial commute (it could be 2-4 hours each way, depending on traffic, by car) during a previous job at Google so that she could be home with two young daughters for dinner every night.

Some public comments:

Sylvia French: “Must have been hard rising to that level as a woman.”

Missy Dawn: “I have never heard of you or any of this. I wish I would’ve sooner. I have a 17 year old daughter who is graduating this year. What an inspiration to young woman you are and this organization.”

Amy Hayes: “You are an inspiration to us all!”

The Piper Malibu, especially the early Continental-powered version with the 4-blade MT prop (quiet inside!), is the ideal family airplane. As long as you have a letter from God promising that the stressed-to-the-limit turbocharged piston engine won’t quit, you can fly in pressurized air-conditioned comfort nearly anywhere in North America with just one stop and sipping gasoline at close to 20 mpg. (Debbie’s Matrix version is slightly simpler and, unfortunately, not pressurized.)

As I tend to do with any story about aviation, I looked up the plane and the pilot in the public registries. It seems that the plane, N488EA, was purchased new by an Oregon LLC in 2008 and hasn’t been resold. (Oregon has no sales tax, so this saves about $70,000 in California taxes.) In the FAA airmen registry (who will get out the pitchforks to make them update their sexist language?) there is a “Deborah Ross Ferguson” in the Sacramento area with the bare minimum ratings necessary to fly a Malibu with insurance, i.e., a Private certificate with “Airplane Single Engine Land” and “Instrument Airplane” ratings. But the certificate was issued in May 2016. Certificates are issued when a person adds a rating, e.g., the instrument rating. How did Ms. Ferguson fly a $1 million cabin-class airplane for 8 years without the minimum ratings?

Ms. Ferguson’s LinkedIn page confirms the narrative from the video, with commuting to Silicon Valley starting in 2004 for a job at Google. Any kind of search for “Deborah Ross Ferguson,” however, brings up pages mentioning a “David Ross Ferguson.” A search for “Debbie Ferguson,” brings up this page:

Conference delegates will hear from Fiona Mullan, Facebook’s HR Director from EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) who will speak about Facebook’s diversity programmes and Debbie Ferguson, Engineering Director at Facebook who will speak about her experience as a transgender women in the workplace.

If we assume that this pilot got a new certificate due to a name change, that the transition from “David Ross” to “Deborah Ross” occurred at the time of the FAA certificate reissue in 2016, and that Ms. Ferguson was 18 years old when entering college in 1983 (LinkedIn), she spent 51 years identifying as a man.

Certainly this story could be inspiring as a tale of American personal fulfillment. Ms. Ferguson built a successful career doing what she loved, earned a pilot certificate, has enjoyed the freedom of flight, and was able to select a new gender. But why would it be specifically inspiring to women considering engineering as a career? What if the lesson that they take away is “The best way to succeed as a woman in Silicon Valley is to spend 51 years as a man”?

[And what lesson can men learn? Ms. Ferguson’s LinkedIn profile says “Particularly passionate about coaching women as they develop their leadership skills.” Is the best way for a man to demonstrate passion about women in the workplace to become one?]

Separately, I wonder if this is the answer to Bay Area real estate prices. Six Silicon Valley workers buy shares in a $300,000 Piper Malibu. That’s $50,000 each.  Four of them get pilot certificates and rotate so that there are always two pilots in the front seat as an airline-style crew (for safety). They can then live 80 miles away and get to work with about one hour of round-trip flying per day. The plane thus runs 250 hours per year for the commute. At $300 per hour (everything costs more in California), that’s $75,000 per year in expenses plus another $25,000 for hangar and insurance. Each of the six is thus spending $16,667 per year or about $1,400 per month. That’s way less than the additional cost of housing in Silicon Valley, right? As an added bonus, when these six folks age out of the Silicon Valley workforce, e.g., at 50, they’ll have enough flying hours to get a job at an airline.

Related:

• “Netflix and Facebook now offer gender reassignment as a staff benefit” (Telegraph)
• Black Girls Code
• Teaching young Americans to be code monkeys
• Malibus for sale on controller.com

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It is not the best timing, but the big NBAA show is next week in Las Vegas (Oct 10-12). I’ll be there on Tuesday and Wednesday and more or less free in the evenings. Happy to get together with readers. Use the comment section here or email to propose a plan!

(I’ll be in Zion National Park before the show in case there are readers in southern Utah!)

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The media told us that flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey destroyed up to a million cars (example: WIRED). Yet I recently booked a rental car at DFW and Orbitz showed prices for cars ranging from $13-15 per day (compact to full size). If a million cars actually were destroyed and people in Houston do need cars to get around, how can that be consistent with the low rental prices and ample supply?

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DxOMark has spoken. Samsung put in a bigger sensor than Apple did. Tim Cook was unable to continue Steve Jobs’s revocation of the laws of physics (at least in the eyes of Apple customers) and therefore the indoor performance of the Samsung is better. Samsung also put in a better/faster autofocus (AF) system, according to DxOMark.

What kind of phone owner wants to take pictures of subjects that move around, thus stressing the AF system? And the phone owner is often indoors with these subjects? Parents!

The tests:

• iPhone 8 and 8 Plus
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8

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One of the entertainers on our recent cruise was a magician. He played around with some variations on Three-card Monte. Of course none of the passengers (average age: 70) had a chance of figuring out what was going on, but I wondered if another magician, or perhaps a computer vision system, would have been able to track the money card.

What do readers think? Suppose that one were able to retrieve a Google Glass device from Africa or an improved successor whose camera was impossible to spot. The device is then connected up to LTE. A professional magician, or perhaps just software, watches the game and, at the end, indicates via pocket vibrations which card to select. Would this end the era of Three-card Monte? (Or maybe it will end sooner if countries abolish cash?)

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I’m not a TV-watcher so I’ve been shielded from a lot of the sadness around the recent Las Vegas shooting. This seems as though it will be a significant shock to our society. After we recover from the immediate grief, I wonder what readers think will change.

Due to our Constitution and a lack of consensus to restrict gun ownership, I am not expecting a substantial change in gun laws.

Despite the shooting occurring in the middle of a downtown area and therefore in an area served by roughly 5,000 police officers (Wikipedia: “Metro is the largest law enforcement agency in the state of Nevada, and one of the largest police agencies in the United States.”), it was more than one hour before the shooting stopped (the shooter killed himself). Will this lead to a change in police equipment or tactics? [Correction from Bill Swersey in the comments below: “the shooting lasted less than 15 minutes”]

After 9/11 there was a reduction in mass gatherings. We had a population of 282 million back in 2000 and now we’re up to 325 million so, absent social change, there should be more crowded events in 2017 than there were in 2001. Will the government be reluctant to issue permits for gatherings that could be easily attacked? Or will Americans shy away from being in crowds?

Separately, what do folks think about this CBS lawyer fired for expressing her lack of sympathy for any Republican gun owners killed? (Daily Mail) She had previously been an “outspoken critic of Republicans [who] also helped organize a block party for the Hillary Clinton last year.” I’m troubled by this, especially if it was a private (friends-only) Facebook thread. There are a lot of people suffering on Planet Earth and Americans demonstrate no sympathy for most of them (i.e., despite any fine words we might utter we don’t take any practical steps to assist the sufferers). This firing seems like a move in the direction of mandated hypocrisy. The lawyer can be unsympathetic and keep her job, but she can’t admit the thoughtcrime of lack of sympathy.

Note that I will actually be in Las Vegas next week for NBAA.

Readers: I hope that none of you were personally affected by this shooting. Feel free to share your thoughts via the comments. I’m kind of stunned at how destructive seemingly obscure humans can be. This one guy killed roughly the same number of people as Hurricane Maria. That’s sobering.

[I’m aware that, statistically, the U.S. actually experiences less gun violence than we did in the 1990s, despite a much larger population (Wikipedia). But I still think that the shooting in Las Vegas will have a big impact because Americans are driven by emotions more than numbers.]

Related:

• The Son Also Rises: economics history with everyday applications (the criminal’s father was also a criminal (bank robber))
• The Son Also Rises: Tips for Optimizing Your Life

 

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A pilot friend invited me to see American Made. There is a lot to love in this movie about, um, informal transportation networks from Colombia up through Central America and into the U.S. One of the stars is the Piper Aerostar, a fast piston twin. There is also a beautiful AStar helicopter. Progress in aviation is so sluggish that the filmmakers probably worked much harder to find 40-year-old cars than they did to find 40-year-old aircraft. All of the types being flown in the late 1970s and early 1980s are still flying today and some are even still being made!

The movie is realistic when it comes to single-engine procedures in a piston twin, short-field takeoffs, airline crew checklist procedures, etc. Barry Seal refers to a sectional chart and uses an E6B. The attention to detail and accuracy is better than in Sully, for example.

Non-pilots may appreciate the family scenes; what would it be like to be married to someone involved in some dangerous and plainly illegal activities? Also you’ll learn that you should bring in Colombian drug lords to plan your next party. If the movie is realistic (and why wouldn’t it be?), those guys really knew how to have a good time! (not using their own product, of course)

Readers: Did you see this movie? What did you think?

Related:

• Wikipedia page on Barry Seal, on whose life the movie is (somewhat loosely) based; see also Slate on what’s fact and what’s fiction
• Journal of Popular Studies (a.k.a. People) on a fatal Aerostar crash during filming (Tom Cruise apparently did some of the Aerostar flying for the movie, but was not involved with the accident)

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One of the sad things that happened while I was away on the cruise ship was the Google Heretic fading from the news. His spirit lives on, however, in the September/October 2017 issue of MIT Technology Review, our alumni magazine. The cover story is “35 innovators under 35 who are shaping the future of technology” with the additional tag of “Meet Tech’s Rising Stars.” (Certainly it would be a painful waste of time to read about anyone older than 35, unless perhaps the topic were technology for nursing homes.)

Depicted on the cover as the “first among equals” of the 35 is “Software engineer Tracy Chou,” whose LinkedIn page reveals that she no longer does technical work, having left her coding job at Pinterest to join Ellen Pao in “Project Include.” Page 43 of the issue explains that this is “an organization designed to help CEOs implement diversity and inclusion strategies at their companies.”

Chou is being celebrated by the editors of Technology Review for gathering some data on the gender IDs of people who work in various Silicon Valley enterprises (but in a world where gender is fluid, how can we rely on data more than one day old?). In other words, her specific technical achievement is kind of similar to the first-week-of-September work of a high school student in AP Statistics.

[You might ask… What are the most interesting-sounding technical projects described in this issue? My personal theory is that better solar cells and batteries are the most critical items, so I pick the following out of the 35:

• “Michael Saliba a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, set out to investigate a new type of solar cell based on a family of materials known as perovskites” (efficiency now up to 21 percent)
• Gene ­Berdichevsky, a battery nerd from Tesla who has co-founded a battery startup
• “[Lorenz] Meier, now a postdoc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, built his own system instead: PX4, an open-source autopilot for autonomous drone control.” (nowhere near the potential impact of solar/batteries, but interesting to me!)

]

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that the U.S. has reached the point that the most notable people in technology are no longer technologists.

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One of the things that I like to take pictures of is people taking pictures. Now that arguments about gender equity are consuming our society I paid some attention during a recent two-week trip (cruise with mom) to the apparent gender IDs of the photographers and subjects.

First, an astonishingly high percentage of tourists seem to be assembled into heterosexual cisgender couples. Reading the last couple of years of the New York Times led me to believe that same-sex and transgender romance is blossoming worldwide so I’m not sure what accounts for the preponderance of apparently male/female couples wandering around Portugal, the Atlantic islands, and Morocco.

Second, when one member of a couple is taking a picture of the other it is usually the man taking a picture of the woman.

Readers: Do you know of any studies of these phenomenon? I’m wondering if what I observed anecdotally is consistent with data.

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Mom and I finished our cruise trip with a TAP Portugal flight from Lisbon to Boston. In every other country that I can remember visiting the people who check passports are unarmed. If there is a perceived likelihood of armed conflict with deplaning passengers there might be one or two specialist soldiers or police officers walking around. At Logan Airport, however, every immigration or customs official was armed with a pistol. Thus there were roughly 100 people with guns confronting the arriving passengers. If this situation is replicated all across the U.S., I wonder why there aren’t more shootings. Presumably it is unlikely that an arriving passengers will actually have a gun, but why wouldn’t there be at least occasional shootings of unarmed passengers by officials saying “I thought he was pulling out a gun”?

[Separately, if you ever do fly TAP Portugal, make sure that you sign up for specific seats towards the front of the aircraft. It seems that TAP operates a three-class service, but the middle class (where you probably want to be) was apparently unknown to our travel agent (Frosch). TAP sells Business for crazy $$. They have a regular Economy for which you pay the Economy fare and then go to their site and pay an extra 25 euro or so to get a seat with a normal amount of legroom (maybe like JetBlue’s worst seats). Then they have a Steerage class in the back for people who are 5′ tall and/or desperately poor and unable to afford the 25 euro. We let Frosch handle everything and of course ended up in Steerage.]

Related:

• Why aren’t there a lot more police shootings in the U.S.?

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