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An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

tsa.arik.io

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#41
post #29
post #2

I get that it's trying to be funny, but is it really no longer possible to create a website with a single arrow that doesn't have to pull down all this cruft ? window.jQuery || document.write(' ')

Make a thing responsive, people bitch about how many plugins you're using. Make a thing vanilla, people bitch about how it doesn't work on their phone.

A few lines of CSS could have done the trick. Read:

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#42
I feel like HN's nerd rage at stuff like this (the TSA expenditure) is the same reason many (if not most) engineers make less than they could. It's a very willful denial of a fact of how the world works (large organizations routinely pay large sums for seemingly very simple work).

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#44

I'm not sure the TSA app is weighted 50/50

For all we know, it's using the camera to gauge the "brown-ness" of the current passenger's skin, and using that as an input to the calculation. It would be about as racially and culturally unbiased as anything else the TSA has ever done.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#45
post #17

I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.

It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/

According to Wikipedia there have been 6 notable hijackings in the last 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#20...

There are roughly 100k commercial flights per day, 36m flights per year.

Therefore, the probability of your flight being hijacked is 1 in 30 million, which is an absurdly low number. Note that only one of the 6 hijackings resulted in casualties, so the mortality rate even lower.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#46
post #29
post #2

I get that it's trying to be funny, but is it really no longer possible to create a website with a single arrow that doesn't have to pull down all this cruft ? window.jQuery || document.write(' ')

Make a thing responsive, people bitch about how many plugins you're using. Make a thing vanilla, people bitch about how it doesn't work on their phone.

But the app only needs to work on Mobile Safari (let's say 8 or higher?). Not rocket science to make it vanilla.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#47
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! My first attempt was just 10 lines of HTML code, but it was a real pain to do the vertical centering on iOS. So I tried a Bootstrap template, saw that even they didn't do the centering on iOS, but was too lazy to change it back.

Modern iOS should support flexbox, which should get you what you want with a few lines of CSS. http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox

iOS does, but it is a bit funky sometimes and has some weird bugs.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/

..and yet airport security didn't stop this.

> [The] EgyptAir flight was taking too long to get from Alexandria to Cairo

Not to interrupt some good-old lazy cynicism, but something tells me there is a substantial difference between domestic Egyptian airport security and the TSA.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#49
post #17

I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.

It's a jobs program. IMHO we should put them to work building gaudy monuments of Obama.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#50
post #17

I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.

It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/

I imagine that things are a bit different in Egypt (eg cockpit doors arent locked and bullet proof)
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