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United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

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Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#411
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you don’t. You are being an asshole to prove a point. But I am going to assume that you are an intelligent person, and since you are, you know as well as I do that nobody you are treating this way is in a position to do anything about the situation. Nobody in line is going to empathize with your stand when you are disrupting their travel. You are doing this so you can feel high and mighty, but you know damn well…

> You are being an asshole to prove a point. How is waiting for my turn to go through the metal detector or be patted down being an asshole? I arrived before the people behind me and I’m following the security procedures of the airport. It explicitly says to keep your belongings in your position at all times. To keep your bags in view. In fact they ask you if you ever lost sight of your bags. If people don’t want to…

> I make it a point to hold up the whole line

What you are doing is the equivalent of paying some poor cashier in pennies while everyone behind you is forced to wait in order to get revenge for some decision made by executives ten rungs up the food chain.

It is childish and immature. And worse, it biases people against whatever point you’re trying to make in the first place. Please make the conscious choice to be a better person.

> It explicitly says to keep your belongings in your position at all times.

Since you are hell-bent on following all rules to the letter, you could at least commit to the bit and follow your luggage through the X-ray machine.

If you concede that it’s not reasonable to do so, then I think you’re capable of being adult enough to concede that neither is purposefully obstructing a bunch of other travelers for the sake of a pointless exercise to obstruct everyone else so you can maintain eye contact with your luggage.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#412
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember: Kim Jong-Un’s brother was not killed directly by North Korean goons. They hired two women they convinced they were working on a prank show to spray him with the poisons. You’d do something like that.

After reviewing the video tapes the police concluded that the women knew that they were handling poison - they kept their hands away from their body and immediately washed them after the attack.

Someone could have told them it was anything else that you wouldn't want on your body. Like, fart spray or whatever. A prank. That behavior doesn't really tell you anything conclusive, but I guess they just let anyone be a cop these days.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#413
post #107
post #85

What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it. This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane. I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of T…

Seems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names

This would probably be a supply chain attack if it ever happens.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.

The industry is usually smarter than this. For example, there are many pieces of equipment that can be broken and they’ll still fly, because it’s not essential or there’s enough redundancy. Child safety seats are not required even though they’d save lives, because the extra hassle and expense would cause some parents to drive instead, which is much more dangerous, leading to more overall deaths. Normally the decision…

All of those have the luxury of risk evaluation in advance

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#415
post #85

What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it. This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane. I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of T…

[deleted]

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. A normal level of risk aversion in one of the most risk averse industries If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.

No they wouldn't. A fundamental part of a threat is to make it very clear that there's a threat. The reason you threaten is to get some concession, otherwise you wouldn't bother threatening.

This is at odds with basically every major security incident postmortem in recent history.

Most security failures happen when people wait to take something seriously until it is “very clear” that something is wrong.

We have the luxury of hindsight while reading this article but listen to the tapes of any security failures and you’ll find it painfully obvious that the most common issue is that people don’t do anything until it’s too late.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#418
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aviation documentation in general is expected to use special, constrained variant of english (Simplified Technical English) where one of the requirements is that every word has preferably only one meaning, and there's a standard dictionary of those meanings that were selected. Similarly there are various things like Aviation English for actual live comms, though they have less specifity, not to that level. And yes, t…

For the curious, it’s AST-STE100. https://www.asd-ste100.org/

I managed to download it!

Feeling very proud. That compsci degree finally paid off

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not about the UA flight, but the grandparent's first point. I can see how it's not simply superstition or theater. Critical info gets communicated either over fuzzy radio or 220 character ACARS messages. You wouldn't want to introduce into that context any spurious usages of phrases that would result in wasted time disambiguating whether a garbled transmission was referring to the Very Serious Bad kind of "crash" or…

The problem is that there isn't a simple canonical way to disambiguate, despite that being the obvious and superior solution. Taboo is a shitty communication feature. Taboo demands active silence in a system with too much entropy for that to be feasible. It would be far superior to train everyone to say "good crash" (and respond appropriately) instead. Words only have meaning in context. The whole point of instating…

That would not solve the problem. On a radio, you could have a moment of interference and only receive 'crash' when someone broadcasts 'good crash'. It is better to avoid certain words entirely. There is also no reason to use those specific words when you could describe, e.g. a software crash as a software problem, error, issue, etc.

Re: United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert

#420
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are being an asshole to prove a point. How is waiting for my turn to go through the metal detector or be patted down being an asshole? I arrived before the people behind me and I’m following the security procedures of the airport. It explicitly says to keep your belongings in your position at all times. To keep your bags in view. In fact they ask you if you ever lost sight of your bags. If people don’t want to…

> I make it a point to hold up the whole line What you are doing is the equivalent of paying some poor cashier in pennies while everyone behind you is forced to wait in order to get revenge for some decision made by executives ten rungs up the food chain. It is childish and immature. And worse, it biases people against whatever point you’re trying to make in the first place. Please make the conscious choice to be a b…

> What you are doing is the equivalent of paying some poor cashier in pennies while everyone behind you is forced to wait in order to get revenge for some decision made by executives ten rungs up the food chain.

These rules are not made by CEOs. They’re made by the people the populace has chosen to elect. Either directly or indirectly through inaction.

> It is childish and immature. And worse, it biases people against whatever point you’re trying to make in the first place. Please make the conscious choice to be a better person.

Again, what part of waiting for my turn is childish or immature? If the person in front of me is waiting for her turn I’m not going to complain. That’s the system we’ve arrived at.

> Since you are hell-bent on following all rules to the letter, you could at least commit to the bit and follow your luggage through the X-ray machine.

I think you’re misunderstanding my actions. I don’t hold up the line for no reason. I hold up the line until both me and my bags go through in tandem. Not a moment sooner nor a moment longer.

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