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American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

paddleyourownkanoo.com

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Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#171

Post by notahacker »

hedora wrote: post #132
notahacker wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App screenshot on the appstore shows a list of names associated with a rota, presumably crew member names scraped from the airlines' password-protected crew portal. It's not especially surprising airlines don't want unauthorised third party apps accessing and storing personal data from their intranets, even if the third party developer is very ethical about not leaking it to people without passwords and makes beautif…

It doesn't really matter if the airlines want them to scrape or not; it is their right to scrape.

They don't have a right to scrape password protected personal data off an intranet, and AA also have the right to attempt to block an app or its scrapers regardless of whether the scraping is legal or not.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#172

Post by ajmurmann »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #103

"One flight attendant said of the current situation affecting Sequence Decoder that they had “never seen a company go out of their way to make life harder for their workers.”" Every large company I've worked for had an IT department (or similar) that intentionally made developers'/sysadmins' lives harder. They don't care. So the good people leave, morale drops, productivity drops, management starts implementing crap…

I think all of that comes down to incentive design being too narrow for some central departments. Terrible outcomes for the IT department are breaches and their own work going up a lot due to lower maintainability. Another example might be the legal department where the worst outcome is the company doing something that causes legal problems. Yet, the worst outcomes for the company of missing business opportunities because we ship too late or don't ship at all because we avoid all legal risk or everyone struggling with tooling.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#173

Post by sidewndr46 »

gwillen wrote: post #167
sidewndr46 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of interesting. I take so many flights I never really remember one from the next. But I do remember at least one flight attendant letting us know that videoconferencing in flight is a felony. I could never find any such regulation, but I guess that wasn't an AA flight.

Sounds like the flight attendant had an unusually severe case of "making shit up".

I'm assuming the airline instructed them to make this announcement.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#174

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

ajmurmann wrote: post #172
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #103

"One flight attendant said of the current situation affecting Sequence Decoder that they had “never seen a company go out of their way to make life harder for their workers.”" Every large company I've worked for had an IT department (or similar) that intentionally made developers'/sysadmins' lives harder. They don't care. So the good people leave, morale drops, productivity drops, management starts implementing crap…

I think all of that comes down to incentive design being too narrow for some central departments. Terrible outcomes for the IT department are breaches and their own work going up a lot due to lower maintainability. Another example might be the legal department where the worst outcome is the company doing something that causes legal problems. Yet, the worst outcomes for the company of missing business opportunities be…

I've never seen a central/siloed department that prioritized anyone over itself. Hierarchies suck at collaboration.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#175

Post by hnburnsy »

shagie wrote: post #139
pc86 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is notably distinct from visa requirements, but taxes are typically owed in the jurisdiction in which the work takes place, if you are there for a certain period of time or longer. The exact time period varies based on locality (state/county/city in the US). It is complex enough that the only answer that is definitely wrong is "I'm just traveling for me so I can do whatever I want."

As an extreme example of this: https://kansaspolicy.org/rethinking-taxes-around-remote-work... > Kansas has policies that could deter remote work and are deterring greater interstate work with our neighbors. Kansas requires employer withholding for people working in the state just for one day, which creates an annoying hurdle for companies trying to operate even in a small capacity in Kansas. In 2020, the Kansas legi…

I assumed this was always the case, just that no one except professional athletes actually do it. The CA FTB makes me afraid to take lengthy vacations in California.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#176

Post by Brian_K_White »

OJFord wrote: post #94
arciini wrote: post #21

I'm sad that this is happening to an app that's useful to its users, but the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. I know of businesses (scraping for ride-sharing, scraping for business intelligence for retailers, scraping from L…

> the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. > This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. No, it's easy: they're employees, they can be told they're not allowed to do that. Doesn't matter if the app's legally allowed to exist or not.

You know, employees are not actually property, and there are actually limits on what an employer can tell an employee.

Everything an employer might possibly try to say about using any other software or tools to collect, handle, and redisplay "their" data, applies exactly the same to a blind employees screen reader.

Hell it applies to glasses.

Thank deity for blind people and other disabilities making it actually illegal to be as huge dicks as some companies would be if they could be.

I do not understand the the desire to even try to defend AA's position here, but am glad it's a failed attempt at least.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#178

Post by Firmwarrior »

smcl wrote: post #164
kleiba wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his children needed in their gym kit was a hassle, then working out how to report them as sick was a nightmare. This seems very removed from my own school days: - find out what the children were doing at school : you couldn't, really, the curricula were not public. You could ask your kids after…

> What else could it be? Swimming trunks/swimsuit. Clean indoor trainers for basketball/volleyball/circuit training/etc, or scruffy outdoor ones for cross-country running, orienteering or anything muddy outside. In winter they may need to take something warmer if there's outdoor activities planned, some locations in the north or near mountains may even do skiing or cross-country skiing. In our school in winter time w…

> (casually implies kids have multiple workout outfits/shoes and regularly engage in expensive outdoor activities)

Man, sometimes I'll run into a reminder that I grew up poor as dirt, haha

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#179

Post by shagie »

anovikov wrote: post #58
mannerheim wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it checks whether their shifts are compliant with labour laws.

These aren't labour laws strictly speaking, more like airline safety laws. I.e. they aren't about well-being of employees but safety of planes operated by overworked crews.

https://www.paddleyourownkanoo.com/2022/10/04/u-s-flight-att...

> Although the law was passed back in October 2018 and was meant to be implemented within 30 days, the Trump administration allegedly put the measure on the backburner and “on a regulatory road to kill it”.

> The previous administration initially blamed the delay on a massive backlog facing the FAA caused by a partial government shutdown and then the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737MAX.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#180

Post by not2b »

gpvos wrote: post #83
not2b wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that reasoning, if the company refuses to comment an article should not be published, or if published must be rejected as one sided? That's convenient.

You can always still publish when they don't react within a reasonable time, and add a comment to that effect, as you can often see in newspaper articles.

From the article: "American Airlines has been contacted for comment." Evidently they did not respond.
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