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14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#401

Post by sixothree »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #319
DanBC wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running seti / etc on the school computers does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity. He was number one on SETI for years, running the client without approval on 5,000 machines. It's not surprising that people get fired for increasing costs by that much without getting approval first. See also http://www.securityfocus.com/news/300

Thousands can be wasted on dumb stuff like bad office-supply purchasing decisions. Those folks don't get fired. Sounds overblown - folks afraid of anything they don't understand.

Having lived in the deep south most of my life I think I understand what's going on here.

It's not that they're afraid of things they don't understand. It's that there is a certain type of person they generally don't like. In this case it might have been a man that had some sort of intellectual curiosity, maybe a bit eccentric. And they will use their ignorance as a weapon against those people.

The police department knows full well they can determine whether this was a bomb or not. It's within their ability to interview every person he interacted with to find if he claimed it was a bomb at any point. Instead of doing that they will use their lack of knowledge to allow falsehoods to move the investigation.

It was within the ability of the staff to determine the monetary cost of this man's actions. In the very least they could compare the electricity bill during a month he was running SETI versus the next month when he was not. They could calculate the power consumption of the machines.

It's not that they are afraid of knowing. But that knowing or admitting the truthfulness of the facts makes them less powerful as people.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#402

Post by boomlinde »

eldude wrote: post #327
boomlinde wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean furthering a different political narrative than you are.

So, you focus on attacking my point with insinuation and equivocation, yet ignore the exploitative anti-intellectual (fact-less) position of the TechCrunch author, whose sole contribution to the story was to inject race? Conveniently, you ignored the facts and in doing so implicitly mischaractered me as equally lacking in factual basis for my "narrative", which, of course, is absurdly wrong, since my first word, "Exa…

Perhaps surprisingly, to a small amount of people, "Exactly" isn't the source of the irony that I pointed out, but the fact that you are referring to the real issue, by which you dismiss that there are any other real issues involved. You did so without making a factual argument and without sharing any of the reasoning that had you arrive at that conclusion.

The mystical real issue for which no other explanation is offered is like a textbook example of a political narrative.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#403

Post by jevinskie »

raarts wrote: post #270
benevol wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it striking that you almost never hear about such behavior occurring in Europe (correct me if I'm wrong). Any ideas why things seem to be very different there?

After living in the US as a European for 1.5 years, I've come to the conclusion that americans tend to be more afraid in general. For example I've never heard in Europe of recommendations like 'when selling stuff through craigslist always meet at a starbucks but never at home' either. Also being smart and/or nerdy actually is valued in Europe. It may also be a Southern thing though.

At least for your craigslist example, the fear is not unfounded. [0] That one example happened just last month in my town. The weapon in that case need not be a gun, a knife or baseball bat wielding friend hiding in the bushes would work well too. Perhaps better than Starbucks would be the police department parking lot. That is actually a preferred place for private gun sales - if the buyer is uneasy about conducting the sale at a police station, they are probably a person prohibited from owning a firearm. Our town has added a designated "craigslist zone" at a local fire department precisely to help deter robberies. [1]

So, in the craigslist example, many American people are afraid because there is overwhelming evidence that craigslist robberies A) really do happen with some significant frequency and B) meeting at a public place is a simple, low-effort way of mitigating that risk. I can understand people living in lower crime areas not worrying about craigslist robberies (though I would take the precautions anywhere because it is so simple).

However, in general, I would agree with you that Americans eat up FUD. You can see it in our DHS/TSA, the Patriot Act, collective disinterest in the Snowden leaks, and general anti-Muslim sentiments.

[0]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/man-robbed-at-gunpoint-while-meet...

[1]: http://wlfi.com/2015/08/18/lafayette-adds-monitored-exchange...

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#404

Post by mikeash »

circuiter wrote: post #119
ceejayoz wrote: post #11

> Children are encouraged “specifically [to] not bring items to school that are prohibited.” What, clocks? Or the NASA t-shirt he was wearing? ( https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg )

The cop's expression suggests he's not happy with what's happening to the kid.

But not sufficiently unhappy to do anything about it.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#405

Post by redblacktree »

Alupis wrote: post #372
DanBC wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advice used to be to not turn machines off but let themgo into sleep. This avoided power cycling which some people though caused problems. A sleeping machine still costs money, but much less than a machine churning SETI. 5,000 machines churning SETI for nine years? I'd be interested in estimates of cost.

Well, far from being definitive, but it looks like a regular pc will cost around $227.52 (350 watt psu, $18.96 per month) in electricity per year to run 24/7.[1] (calculated using $0.06 per kWh, which is rather low for most people in the US) So, 5,000 machines running 24/7/365 would cost around $1,137,600 annually (5,000 machines * $227.52 per year) in electricity usage alone. Of that 24 hours per day, we can assume…

Something is wrong with your math. $227.52/year is $0.62/day

Also, bear in mind that PSUs do not use their full rating unless the hardware they are powering requires it. [0] Your number could easily be double what the machines actually used, if the PSU was somewhat oversized, as they typically are.

[0]: https://superuser.com/questions/106792/does-a-power-supply-d...

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#406

Post by [deleted] »

jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

[deleted]

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#407

Post by kmfrk »

jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

Of course, people would rather that part of his heritage weren't brought up, leaving us with Michael Fassbender portraying him on the big screen.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#408

Post by pfg »

hnpc123 wrote: post #385
powertower wrote: post #249

There is likely more to this story. I'm basing this on 3 facts: 1. In 2015 it's highly unlikely that you could build a home-made clock that would be of the size and shape resembling a bomb - that is, unless it was made to look like a bomb. 2. Ahmed, his father, and anyone else with a phone camera (that is on Ahmed's side) would have posted a picture of the clock, or given a full description of it (size, shape, etc),…

Sad that you're being downvoted (and probably flagged) for expressing a reasonable opinion. Hacker News has been a left-wing echo chamber ever since the crazies started flowing in during that period when every story on the front page was NSA related. Now it's nearly impossible to have a reasoned discussion on any non-technical issue without SJWs using the voting system here to silence dissent.

Maybe he's being downvoted because the so-called facts he's basing his suspicion on can be easily disproven, as demonstrated by the other replies?

I don't get how this can possibly be about left vs right. Common sense hopefully doesn't depend on which side of the political spectrum you fall into.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#410

Post by drjesusphd »

witty_username wrote: post #63

> The newspaper quoted a police spokesman, James McLellan, as saying that Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, and the police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still did not believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story. “We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” Mr. McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation. “It coul…

> It could reasonably be mistaken as a device

Oh no. A device!?

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