And they're freaking beautiful.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, huh?

But I've never heard of any conference happening there. I probably just need to sign up for some kind of newsletter

We have lots of really awesome scenery here.

So if you like taking pictures, it's a good place to visit.

@NathanOsman you have a ping pong table?

The north shore mountains, the inlet, Fraser River... We have glades, bogs, river deltas, etc.

@JacobVlijm Our building has a recreation room that has one.

:)

@Seth WOW

@Seth Please tell me that isn't a national park.

@NathanOsman It is.

:(

why the sad face?

I can't fly my quadcopter in national parks.

No aerial photography.

:(

Ah. Right.

That sounds pretty stupid, actually. Perfect place for it.

It would have been very beautiful too.

Yeah.

When that picture was taken there were actually forest fires they were fighting and there were lots of complaints of drones interfering with the firefighting helicopters and stuff.

I totally understand that they don't want people flying them over crowds, but a rest area on the side of the road isn't likely to have a big crowd...

@Seth Yeah, but those are just idiots that know better spoiling it for the rest of us.

@NathanOsman unfortunately true :/

So, refactored code for my clipboard indicator slightly. At least that works. Probably I can add couple new features to it on the weekend

@NathanOsman on the flipside, I can understand why they're concerned. People are there to be with nature, not a buzzing drone. And they don't want hundreds of drones dropping dead at random areas around the park nor people going after them. The memorandum that banned them specifically mentioned stopping it before it got big so they could examine it and come up with good rules.

@Seth I can sort-of understand that, but the noise isn't a problem if you observe the "don't fly in a crowd" rule.

You'll never be bothering more than a couple people.

@NathanOsman fair enough

they also don't want them bothering wildlife, although most smart people wouldn't do that.

Also, yes, they can be noisy when near the ground, but once they're 60m up, you can't hear them at all.

I wonder how hard it is to get a permit.

And rest areas are where vehicles are stopping. Vehicles aren't quiet :P

We've got a q. for that: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/107036/drones/107060#107060

there's no single license, it's per park per [person in charge of the park].

per park per . . . a new tongue twister

Fun fact: it isn't actually illegal to fly in a national park. It is illegal to take off and land in a national park.

The FAA controls the airspace :P

So in theory, you could take off just outside, fly in, and then fly out to land.

true, you could do that, actually. but you'd need one big battery to get anywhere good.

The Phantom 4 can fly at 55 mph...

And with enough antennas, you could easily fly it a few miles away.

@Seth :O that's amazing :) :)

The picture isn't very good, but the view is :D

@Seth I love ping pong

(I'm rubbish, but I don't care about that)

So, no major Internet services are down today? How did we manage to pull that off? :P

@NathanOsman Just wait till @Zanna sends everybody on mass coffee break

Judging by what happened last time, maybe we don't need a coffee break :P

bedtime here, too late for coffee, I'll take a hot chocolate

No love for tea after midnight ?

herbal tea :)

Red Bull at 2am <--- don't do that

I sometimes drink coffee at night. Doesn't do anything to me , it seems

Its only 10:45 pm in London. This PSA brought to you from Wonton bus number123 :D

@AskUbuntuMeta wow... wth happened?

@NathanOsman digitalocean is having (or had ) some maintenance.

@KazWolfe which datacenter?

@NathanOsman SFO1 i believe

Wat.

I have a server there and never heard anything.

and SGP-1 is flaky

It's loading fine for me.

^^^ Edmonton not wonton. My phone spell checker has poor humour :p

Must have been earlier.

sorry, no, it's scheduled for the eigth

my bad

Meh, I don't have any critical infrastructure in that datacenter.

Just a bunch of static files and whatnot.

@Seth @ThomasWard @terdon did any of moderators convert this guy's answer to comment ?meta.askubuntu.com/q/16787/295286 Or was it done by automatically somehow and it's a new feature we don't know about ?

@Serg that's odd, there's no answer there at all.

I'm not aware of any automated comment system..

Well, that's odd then. OP is at 50 rep, so cannot post comments, and thus couldn't mistakenly post one

@Serg It was not done manually.

@KazWolfe then whodunit ?

@Serg iunno.

all i do know is that the system does say that the comment was directly posted.

@Serg ^^

@terdon aahh!! TIL

@Zanna You and me both. I didn't know that either.

I was really baffled there

Hidden features , huh

it does seem a bug that low-rep users can bypass

@KazWolfe nah, it's not a bug, it's just automating what mods do, although without mod discretion of whether or not to convert the comment. Oli posted nice answer about that

it's midnight in Oli land

yeah, he's probably working late or can't sleep. Or both.

if you can't sleep getting on the computer isn't the best idea :/

Yeah, the blue light of the monitor will keep you awake

but on the other hand it's at least doing something rather than fidgeting in bed