According to the article, it was a Fitbit device belonging to a teenager...
Chances are, the kid selected that nickname for the device a long while ago and forgot about it, and was probably unaware that the device was using Bluetooth at all, and that they should turn off their fitness tracker when the announcement came through...
At the same time, some people in the comments under the article are more or less calling for the death penalty for the kid...
I wouldn't like to guess either way about this particular article, but it's possible many really are people. Certainly there were plenty of online commenters for news articles reacting in exactly this sort of way long before there were LLMs.
It seems very obvious to me that certain constituencies in online commenting are at all-time highs for loudness:
* police/prison/statist notions of justice
* auto industry / auto-first infra
* both pro- and anti-israel
* pro-IP / copyright industrial complex
There are a bunch more. Maybe it's a shift in actual human sentiment, but without evidence, I don't think it makes sense for that to be the first presumption.
Fortunately, we're gonna get this here web-o-trust thing going in the next 10 years or so and not have to doubt who the humans are anymore. Riiight?
Are you really trying to equate murder with naming a Bluetooth device and that a child should have their life ruined on the same scale as if they were equivalent in impact or intent, with little knowledge of the actual situation or intent?
Weird how you want kids to be punished for stupid mistakes. If you drive, you probably put more people lives in danger last week than that kids fitness tracker. When you speed, you put lives in danger (statistical fact, none of that “but I am good driver crap”) — will you ask for the death penalty if a cop sees you going 1mph over?
Or do you only want strong punishment for others as is usually the case with such opinions?
I’ve never understood this logic. If we want to treat people who are under 18 as adults in certain legal circumstances, then we should just establish a new age or set a concrete exception based on the law violated. Making special exceptions on a case by case basis where people have to argue about it, especially when it demonstrably affects certain demographics more than others, is a terrible way to operate.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say you probably don’t have kids. If your teenager got in trouble for a messed up “joke” like this and the result was a criminal proceeding where they’re tried as an adult you’d be (rightfully) crying that it’s too much.
Also what does columbine have to do with this? Unless your implication is that any kid around the age of 17 should be treated as a potential school shooter.
There is something deeply stupid about assuming that naming your bluetooth device "bomb" is a real threat, let alone that it's going to be a real bomb. Reminds me of all those post Columbine "zero tolerance" policies where kids were punished for marginal doodles of guns. Or the "twitter joke trial". It's as is people are string matching for threat shaped words, not the semantics of a threat.
Mind you, this gets harder when powerful people have got in the habit of making mostly-joking threats on social media themselves.
> Throw the book at him, he should have known better.
What book!? The book of laws that outlaw jokes in bad taste potentially made years ago, outside the context of air travel altogether, only to be forgotten about and accidentally brought into the context of air travel where one can conceivably think of laws that make those jokes problematic?
Pretty absurd stuff. Obviously if FAA safety first is going to apply not to aviation employees but to something that is easy to DOS attack as the consumer this doesn't work.. They could at least implement a policy of scanning Bluetooth and similar beacons at security gates though. More theatre, more fun at least doesn't mean more turning around.
> Hard to imagine at least one person didn’t see the device name and immediately brush it off as entirely unimportant.
There are hundreds of BT devices everywhere that people waiting for a flight hang out. Without automatic scanning for the specific purpose of catching weird names, it'd be near impossible for the weird name to ever show up for anyone except the owner. And most devices don't advertise their BT name unless in pairing mode, so no, it wouldn't show up in the security screening either.
So, how did it eventually show up?
Owner's phone goes off/airplane-mode, watch starts advertising; someone else wants to connect their BT headphones and sees the name of the watch?
I suspect it went something like this. "Please turn on the airplane mode now." Phone put into airplane mode. Phone disables BT. Watch loses connection. Because of questionable engineering choices, it automatically enters pairing mode and looks for another known device while also broadcasting its name. Most BT and WiFi devices in the area are turned off so the list of broadcasting devices is very short. The plane crew (I assume) manually check for strong 2.4G signals as part of take off procedures. "The Bomb" is sticking out like a sore thumb among the 5-10 other Fitbits and JBLs.
Importantly, the set of circumstances is so specific it couldn't have happened anywhere that is not an inside of an airplane about to take off - but also it would've happened inside every airplane about to take off.
There are way fewer Bluetooth signals active at once on an airplane then there are in an airport. There is also the entire duration of the flight for it to be discovered. Also take in to account that most people are not fidgeting with their device settings when they are walking around an airport, they are trying to get through security and get to their gate. Once you are on a plane that’s when you usually stop and start setting up your devices, such as connecting headphones.
> Awful joke. There have to be at least some consequences for the kid, like getting banned for flying United for 10 years.
Take a step back. You yourself describe it as a joke. Are you really saying that the quality of the joke ("awful") should result in the origin of the joke (a kid, even!) should be banned from a major air carrier for 10 years? Does this really seem like a proportional response?
And this doesn't even begin to consider another possibility: the device was named what it was named in a completely different setting, and the owner just forgot about it. That makes it not even a joke, just forgetfulness.
Was any of this a good idea? No, probably not, but people need to calm down.
> Was any of this a good idea? No, probably not, but people need to calm down.
I can understand the safety concern - and I think the decision to turn around was ultimately the right call. Especially given that they had called for people turning off BT for some time.
The fact that the device was not turned off suggests to me that the owner did not know they were the cause of this.
If they had done this by intent and were set on going through with it even after the turnaround was initiated, they would have also had the sense to drop the device into some other seat or leave it in the lavatory...
If it turns out they did this with full intent, there should be some _appropriate_ consequence
It sounds like a fantastic DDoS opportunity, you could shut down an entire nation's aviation just by putting a few tiny bluetooth transmitters in places that air passengers might accidentally pick them up. The attack relies entirely on the overreaction to non-threats by ignorant buffoons in positions of authority.
Personally, I think the airline and its policies should be publicly ridiculed. If we don't punish the airline for doing this, and make unequivocably clear that it did the wrong thing, that its "what ifs" are meaningless and bluetooth/wifi channel names are not a security threat, then this nonsense will just continue.
In general and long-term I agree with what you are saying.
I assume this was a new/unknown situation. (On the other hand, the article links to other similar stories, so maybe I am cutting them too much slack).
If "electronic device names" are of concern, there should be an established protocol to deal with them. Especially if this keeps happening.
IDK, this was pure technical incompetence by rubes that can barely operate a smartphone. The delay relies entirely on these supposed "adults in the room" overreacting.
I think this is just the way the decision tree works in safety-sensitive areas where many human lives are at stake. The catch-all in the decision tree, if there is no exact solution, is always the "get to safety at all costs" option.
There will be some window of trying to resolve an issue (here: telling everyone to shut down devices) and when that does not resolve the issue, the catch-all kicks in. That's just the pattern and in an environment like an airplane, where margin for error is slim to non-existant, there is no deviation from that pattern.
> If it turns out they did this with full intent, there should be some _appropriate_ consequence
Sure, if evidence is uncovered of the guy say telling his friends "haha, I'm gonna make them turn the plane around", I can get behind the baying for consequences.
We're nowhere near that. There's plenty of non-nefarious ways this could all have come about, and people need to put down their pitchforks.
You're probably right, they would have probably named it somewhat more entertaining, like "Allahu ackbar". "Bomb" is quite boring. Sounds like an enegy drink brand. Which would be be a unfortunate idea to serve on a plane. Anyway, airlines are quite mundane and like to make a security theatre out of one's luggage, which is mosty underwear, not even something more remotely entertainling off board, like nitricellulose. Not to mention bottled water, uh dangerous liquids, clearely nuclear grade.
My wife would have probably freaked out if she saw a wifi network named "bomb" on the plane. So as an airline security officer I'd totally ban this kind of behaviour.
Isn't the scenario you are describing the ultimate collapse of art and culture as we know it?
If everyone sits at home and creates the content that they want, what do we talk about? How do we engage in shared culture if there is nothing to experience together?
Well, that was a recent invention anyway - at least in Europe where I live. TVs did not really reach most of the households until late '70s and the shared pop culture based on movies (mostly from US), cartoons (mix from Japan and US), advertisements (usually national) was created quite fast.
On top of that, I wonder if it wouldn't be for the better. 100 years ago many regions had distinct cultures. 200 years ago pretty much each village had a wee different culture. With slightly different fairy tales or songs and so on. Nowadays the culture gets standardised at a massive pace. If generative AI could put a stop on it... That'd definitely be an improvement.
Maybe you have a point there.
An optimistic outlook would be that AI allows people to create content that can compete with the polished, mass-produced, standardized stuff without the prohibitive budget requirements.
The pessimistic view is that it leads to more isolation, where everyone only "creates" for themselves.
I don't think it would be worse isolation than consuming standardized mass-produced content. Even a simple prompt, thinking what you want and so on is already the beginning of a creativity. Turning on TV/Netflix/whatever is not.
Unless the problem is people isolation in way, that people would not consume standardized content that also, to some extent, standardize their mind. But in that case it's an isolation problem even without AI when people check out from mass culture and entertain themselves. Wether entirely solo or in small fringe subcultures. Which is kinda isolation if you look from 19th/20th century point-of-view when name of the game was to normalise all the regional cultures into bigger bodies of people. But is such isolation the wrong or a good kind of isolation? I'd lean towards the later.
Welcome to the life of fringe subcultures. Of course subcultures, even most fringe ones, still have some community. But even in generated content world, some people would end up with similar taste and that generated content being similar. They may even share that content and watch some of each other's content! And oh boy the joy of meeting that rare human who has similar taste! E.g. knowing some fringe band that created a demo tape 2 decades ago that you found in some strange torrent tracker.
But yes, mass/pop culture as we know it would be dead. And IMO the world would be better off.
I agree with other comments that may lead to people staying inside their comfort zone. But I think it's question of time when good portion of people would start sharing that content with other people. Expanding each others' imagination. And few that don't... Well, existing pop culture is not exactly good at expanding mind as well. And such decentralized content creation may be less prone to propaganda and other social control efforts.
Why is this relevant for understanding how the IP works or even tweaking it? Whatever is relevant for that matter will most certainly not be a modification to the Linux kernel that the android system is running. It will not fall under the GPL that the kernel is licensed under. Can someone explain why this dispute is worth having beyond a theoretical legal debate on whether they should hand out the particular source tree from which their kernel was built (if they even built it)?
I'm sorry you didn't get a response yet. I'm not a lawyer and have no legal training but it seems to boil down to this:
It's part of the debate of whether (1) GPL is a contract, (2) GPL can be enforced by non-parties, (3) How Fair Use applies, (4) Methods to bully/shame companies to give up source code ...? (5) Who the actual parties involved are if the actual rights holder (Linux Kernel) tries to sue someone. (First Sale doctrine might apply).
Probably a silly question, but if you take this all the way and treat everything as a DB that is synchronized in the background, how do you manage access control where not every user/client is supposed to have access to every object represented in the DB? Where does that logic go?
If you do it on the document level like figma or canvas, every document is a DB and you sync the changes that happen to the document but first you need access to the document/DB. But doesn't this whole idea break apart if you need to do access control on individual parts of what you treat as the DB because you would need to have that logic on the client which could never be secure...
The relative ease with which called-IDs can be spoofed seems to be one of the major "tools" with which scammers can gain the trust of their victims (or trick other systems into believing that they are the victim). Most of the non-technical folks I know will also more or less blindly trust a caller-ID.
Fortunately, many scammers (at least here in Europe) are still calling you claiming they are interpol following up on your Paypal account being breached whilst a +233... number shows on your phone.
Reading speed at that age will vary greatly. Reading subtitles while also having to follow the picture takes away focus and that makes it hard much harder for an inexperienced reader. My daughter, who picked up reading very naturally would have been able to follow sub-titles at age 7 without much trouble. My younger, 7-yo son on the other hand, who is more average in reading ability wouldn't be able to keep up with subtitles yet.
Average reading speeds at age 7 seem to be 60-100 words per minute where subtitles are more at the 100-150 words per minute range. So for above-average readers, it will be possible but for the average, they won't be able to keep up consistently.
I did experience the issue with an FIIO headphone DAC too. Basically, when connecting the device, the balance slider in audio settings would get initialized to what seemed to be a random value.
I am using several other audio interfaces (both USB and Thunderbolt) as well for music production/recording and I have never seen that issue with any of those devices. I suppose it is an interoperability problem between the USB audio class driver and core audio that only manifests for certain types of devices. Still, if it is common enough for people publishing apps to fix it, Apple should get it sorted out.
This actually vaguely rings the bell. I think it happened just a few times and because I quickly heard it I corrected the slider and did not pay attention at the time I suppose.
Don’t think it ever happened in DAW though, only when playing audio from OS.
In order to get close to how these might have tasted in Locke's time, one shouldn't be using modern white flour which is a 19th century development. Using (stone-milled) whole wheat might come closer to how things were in the 17th century. (Also better for your glucose levels)
If you want it on the cheap, go purchase Atta at your local Indian convinence store. Similar for stone milled cornflour (I've found Hispanic store prices have been going up lately compared to Asian stores)
Texture-wise it should be very different due to how the gluten will develop. Taste-wise you are probably right. It’s mostly a substrate for the butter and syrup.
The cover-band analogy isn't so great; the issue where a specific solution becomes a proxy for solving some problems that no one bothered to fully understand is real though. Describing problems and doing thorough discovery is hard and silver bullets are attractive. The cargo-cult analogy is quite fitting for a lot of hyped-up topics.
When you go to a car dealer and tell them your problem is getting from A to B, guess what their solution is going to be...
At the same time, some people in the comments under the article are more or less calling for the death penalty for the kid...
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