U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#121

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, May 11, 2017, 9:49 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #74

Algent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> minor inconvenience Asking everyone in a plane to have nothing to do during a 8h flight (at best) is not a "minor inconvenience".

People who have nothing to do when their laptops are taken away are in needed of a therapist

We are talking about things to do on a plane seat.

The last (and only) time I did a long distance flight, I did 3 things: I watched movies (using plane hardware), I slept (badly), and I used my laptop (I played and worked a bit).

Without my laptop, I could only watch movies or sleep. With a paper notebook, I could do some work, but not much. I could also talk with my neighbours if they feel like it.

Also, I have reserved a flight this summer to see the eclipse. There's no way I'll let my laptop in the cargo hold, for 2 obvious reasons (theft and accidental destruction). So, no laptop for the entire trip. I'll guess I'll have to make do with my palmtop. Not great.

And this is a leisure trip. For a business trip, I would need a computer with my personal settings, that I'm used to: custom keyboard layout, unusual window manager, a GNU/Linux OS… Borrowing a computer can easily be a major hassle.

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#122

Post by tome » Thu, May 11, 2017, 9:52 AM UTC

arghwhat wrote: post #81

RangerScience wrote: post #52

One of the advantageous to living in California is that when I go overseas, I can tell people I'm Californian, rather than American. Because people's ideas of CA is 1) LA/Hollywood, 2) SF/SV, 3) Yosemite / Tahoe, you get a pretty different response.

If you told me you were "Californian", I would give you a really weird stare, think for a moment, and then reply with "Oh, American?", while wondering if you thought California was a country. And even then, very few will know the cultural difference between, say, California and Tennessee or Alabama. Just like an American might think of China as one thing with one culture, we generally view USA as one thing with one c…

I suspect RangerScience meant that he/she tells people she's "from California" rather than "from America".

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#123

Post by Corristowolf » Thu, May 11, 2017, 9:53 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #54

The September 11 attacks were domestic US flights of US airlines. So why only target flights coming from Europe?

Because now we are "culturally enriched".

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#124

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:06 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #66

Oletros wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should be angry that laptops are banned from only flights from some countries, isn't? Or do you think that terrorists are naive and won't use other airlines and origin airports? Or perhaps that intel is just bullshit just to implant those measures

>intel is just bullshit just to implant those measures If you are going to assume without evidence and offhand that everything the American government says is bullshit, you might as well go ahead and join the terrorists because you seem to believe that we support and work for an evil, manipulative and deceptive regime. I am going to believe what the US government says about the raids until there is evidence to the co…

Bullshit security is very easy to do by accident.

Step 1: OMG there's this new threat.

Step 2: OK, it doesn't look that risky. Still, you never know.

Step 3: I know, that new security check/ban/whatever has non-trivial costs. But we can't do nothing, can we?

---

It's a matter of assigning blame. If whoever calls the shots change nothing, and something happens, his head will fall for ignoring that new threat (even if he didn't and made an actual cost/benefit analysis).

Similarly, taking someone off a watch list is very hard. Also see how we are sliding towards a total surveillance state, ostensibly to stop terrorism and child abuse, but actually to stop particular forms of copyright infringement.

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#125

Post by daemin » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:12 AM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #115

gnicholas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about the extra revenue for the airlines from selling more movies on seatback displays.

What seatback displays? Many airlines (the US3 at least) are moving towards the WiFi+bring-your-own-device model.

The ones that you fly long distance with, like say from Europe to Australia.

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#126

Post by ar0 » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:25 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #116

ar0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to set the record straight: I never once in my comment talked about "evidence of conspiracy or fraud on the part of the government". You are putting words into my mouth here. All I am saying is that in my opinion the intel isn't that strong, because otherwise a) other countries would have acted on it as well and b) you would implement the ban in such a way that it isn't trivial to circumvent. This has nothing to…

>This has nothing to do with conspiracy or fraud. But thats exactly what you are saying when you say that they made up a terror threat and lied about the contents of information in the raid to justify policies. That is the definition of fraud and conspiracy

I also never said that "they made up a terror threat and lied about the contents of information in the raid".

There are thousands of pieces of intelligence being gathered every day from various sources about potential new terror plots. They aren't black or white and most of the time very hard to interpret. In the end, it will always come down to interpretation of the actual factual evidence at hand. What is "strong" evidence for one person can be "pretty weak" for someone else. Even if everyone agrees about the actual pieces of evidence you can arrive at very different conclusions about what is actually going on. And even if you were to arrive at the same conclusion on what is going on, you can still have very different opinions on what the best course of action in this situation is.

Nothing of this is "making up a terror threat", "lying", "fraud" or "conspiracy".

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#127

Post by NightlyDev » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:29 AM UTC

What, is it so much better if a bomb goes off while in checked in luggage? What about fires? Stupidest thing ever. We do have security checks, oh wait, they are just for show and to annoy everyone.

"Oh no! It's dangerous, terrorists might do that! Let's make a rule that has no positive effect!"

Arriving in the US and being asked to give up all your keys and passwords is nothing new. "It's because we need to check for illegal content".

Cause that makes sense, if someone had something to hide nothing would stop them from downloading it over the thing called the Internet... /s

Americans are damn stupid, and other countries are doing similar stupid things.

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#128

Post by zkms » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:42 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #102

arethuza wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds vaguely like the Soviet anti-tank dogs from WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

Wow. That's crazy. And it didn't work, either. But humans arguably wouldn't get confused so readily. Even so, they'd just X-ray all passengers.

There already exist commercial transmission (not backscatter!) full-body x-ray security scanners. They are used in prisons now, but there's no reason they can't be used in airports.

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#129

Post by funnyfacts365 » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

janoc wrote: post #100

I do wonder how many laptop bombs have endangered planes so far - vs. actual Li-ion battery fires. Force laptops in the holds and watch planes crash when the inevitable battery fire happens. This policy will likely kill more people than the terrorist menace it is meant to protect against. And that doesn't even consider the loss of business, because people simply won't fly without a laptop (or put it in the hold - con…

When a battery fire sends a plane down they will blame terrorists or something, not their policy. Have you seen anyone blame policy on the Brussels airport attack?

Re: U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

#130

Post by arghwhat » Thu, May 11, 2017, 10:56 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #118

arghwhat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you told me you were "Californian", I would give you a really weird stare, think for a moment, and then reply with "Oh, American?", while wondering if you thought California was a country. And even then, very few will know the cultural difference between, say, California and Tennessee or Alabama. Just like an American might think of China as one thing with one culture, we generally view USA as one thing with one c…

> And even then, very few will know the cultural difference between, say, California and Tennessee or Alabama. As an Australian, I will say I think most Australians understand there are cultural differences between California and Tennessee or Alabama, and could probably even identify what some of the differences are (even if incompletely and overly simplistically). Australians would probably struggle to explain the c…

Understanding that there are differences is one thing, knowing what they are is a whole other. Unless you know anything about those areas, you're still going to simply think "China". I'm not saying they'll refuse the idea of differences.

Maybe this is a cultural thing, with Australians generally having better geographical understanding than Scandinavians? Up here in Scandinavia, China and USA are both just large countries. People of course know that the American states are different (they might even remember a few of the names), but unless they've been there or specifically studied the subject somehow, then they're not going to know how they differ. They might recognize Alabama due to Forest Gump or other movies, but won't necessarily understand a joke about cousins. They might associate Texas with a funny accent and cowboy movies. They'll know that Las Vegas is famous for casinos, but don't ask what state it's in.

I happen to have a personal connection to China, but I can also guarantee you that most people will just give you a blank stare if you mention Xinjiang, guessing its location based on it sounding Chinese by their broken definition of what Chinese sounds like. They will have heard of Tibet, but won't know the dynamics between Tibet and mainland, or even Hong Kong and mainland.

And, just for fun: The only thing I know about California off the top of my head would be that a few sorta successful IT companies have their headquarters there, and as a fellow developer, I assume that there at least has to be some sensible people there as a result. I also happen to know that they were primarily anti-Trump, but I would have to look it up to figure out what things California is famous for. To me, despite having been there, thorough knowledge of USA is simply not relevant information, so I only know about it if someone tells me or if I happen to look it up.