skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd like to know what drove the relatively recent policy shift around demanding that phones and other devices be "completely off" at takeoff and landing, with airplane mode deemed insufficient. From a visual survey of people turning their phones on later, this prohibition seems to be obeyed mostly by one teenager on JetBlue with an iPod once.
Mythbusters did a great show on this problem. Here's a link to the results of the show:

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode49
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The Case for a Security Consultant Guild
I have a Segway. I actually got it for my son and he rode it to school his senior year in high school and had a great time with it (he even got in the Wall Street Journal because of it).

After he got a girlfriend he was more interested in a car so I took the Segway to work and we had a lot of fun ridding it around the office.

After about a month or so, after the novelty had worn off, our CTO was riding it around when he had an accident. He was getting off it but left one foot on the platform and accidentally twisted the handle bar to one side. The Segway took off in a circle throwing him to the ground, nearly throwing him through a plate glass window and running over him.

Your reaction if you get off the thing wrong and it keeps going is to grab it by the handle and try to stop it. But it's heavy, the handlebar is the controller, and it has a lot of torque.

I don't think it's more dangerous than anything else (like a bicycle), but it works in a way that's different than anything else and after a while you get complacent only to get bitten by it.
How the wrong decision in Schwarzenegger v. EMA could kill freemium online games
This (and other explanations in this thread, like "might fly around") seems to tackle the question from the wrong side, imo.

It seems these reasons are made up by rational minds, trying to understand the ban. Like results from "Why the heck is this prohibited again?" pondering, but completely based on speculation.

So unless we can get some facts to back up these claims, I doubt that these replies help the OP. It sounds more like "Been there, thought about it, this is what I/my coworkers could come up with to explain this mistery"?
Agree with this, I ussually just hit the lock button my mobile which is in flight mode and this is accepted by the flight attendents
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Poor usability sank the Titanic
Couldn't resist to complete the last one:

* Relational/NoSQL/The tool for the job
This is my point - are we still in 1984?

No, but I'm pretty sure the point is that planes from 1984 are still in use.
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I disagree. The airlines claim the risk of death from my water bottle is too high to allow me to bring the water on the plane. Fine. However, I'm allowed to bring 100 cellphones in a backpack. They don't care about that, except to politely ask me to turn them off.

If there was a remote chance of a cellphone causing a crash - more chance than a bottle with water in it - then they would ban cellphones in flight.

It's very clear that there is no actual risk of interference at all.
I suspect he means "spies and saboteurs" (to borrow the language of geneva), i.e. combatants who don't display a distinctive sign recognizable at a distance and openly carry weapons.

(The rationale: if one army can't tell the difference between civilians and soldiers, it puts civilians at greater risk. Thus, Geneva creates an incentive for not doing this.)
articles like this make me laugh: it's like wondering if god has a mouth, eyes, and does he shit too? anything alien will be so radically different from these expectations i doubt it'd be recognized.

we are the aliens.
Their API woes lead to problems with other components they offer. Their original iphone sdk component was one of the more polished freely available objective c components out there. Their updated version using that relies on the updated API's is a step backwards in functionality, ease of use and documentation.
Please, please let's let the airlines keep this rule no matter how little it has to do with safety. If you get an honest answer from a pilot, they'll tell you this was never covered in any flight school, and they usually leave their phone on, but can you imagine a flight where that business guy who just doesn't get it spends the whole time on flight talking on the phone?
> they have to make sure

This is the problem, though. They don't make sure! They politely ask you to turn your phone off. 50% of people comply, 50% don't. If they actually had to stop the signals, they would ban all cellphones in the cabin. They could collect them, put them in a lead case with the luggage and move on.

But since they don't "make sure" of anything, I disagree with your explanation.
Thanks for that I was really hoping that Mythbusters had tested it.
"It was found that cell phone signals, specifically those in the 800-900 MHz range, did intefere with unshielded cockpit instrumentation. Because older aircraft with unshielded wiring can be affected, and because of the possible problems that may arise by having many airborne cell phones "seeing" multiple cell phone towers, the FCC (via enforcement through the FAA) still deems it best to err on the safe side and prohibit the use of cell phones while airborne."

So that is interesting, wonder if they suggested modern shielded planes. Also lends credence to ground interferance as the real reason for the "ban"
The Mythbusters guys did do that...

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd...
To my mind this is the key quote:

"If you have a low skilled job there is a higher chance of your job being outsourced but if you are a software developer developing complex software you are very much in demand."

The fact is that most new CS graduates are "low skilled" as real-world, industrial programmers. A CS education can realistically only provide them a grounding in the core theory of the field; it can't, and shouldn't, be teaching them how to work within the context of massive, old, crufty programs that are the norm in the real world. This is the responsibility of employers, and IMO when employers complain about a lack of "good" CS graduates it just shows that they have abdicated their responsibility to train their employers in their own industry niche and somehow expect cheap programmers who are subject matter experts with years of experience in a dozen hyper-specific tools to drop from the sky.

But of course the outsourcing shops are perfectly happy to peddle the lie that their own people are programming geniuses who are also subject matter experts--and look at all the money you'll save! The IT managers get suckered into hiring boatloads of consultants or sending everything offshore, their own good employees, if they had any to begin with, get fired or jump ship, and the cycle accelerates.

Sure I'm cynical, but I've seen it happen often enough, and heard the same from friends who've experienced the same, to justify it.
If they were really dangerous, Al Qaeda would be using them to bring down planes.
Gender-neutral pronouns.

All the cool kids are using them.
Unfortunately abusing someone is not always a question of "intelligence".

A lot of con-men are not especially intelligent, they just know how to exploit one's weakness. And we all have our weaknesses, and no amount of intelligence can shield them enough.

Funny story nonetheless.
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Absolutely. I searched Deletionpedia (pages deleted from Wikipedia) for "Wookiepedia" and easily found that "Force Lightning" was deleted. One of the reasons for deletion (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion... for discussion) was "this is precisely why we have outlets such as Wookiepedia for this sort of stuff." The page on Wookiepedia is http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force_lightning .
>Sam Walton was a billionaire, had a private jet, but he genuinely liked driving around in his pickup truck and flying his older prop airplane.

Bad example. Sam Walton is a classic example of a "counter signal" and he knew quite well what he was doing. When he was alive executives were forbidden from driving their expensive cars to the office. From the Bentonville Walmart store, you can see a large mansion on a hill. It was built by an executive at Walmart. Sam Walton told him that if he must build such a home he would have to build it out of site. Especially out of the sight of store employees. The man refused to hide his hard earned wealth and built the mansion. Walton fired him.
Conclusion: if you're part of the over-intelligent crowd, resist the temptation of signaling.

Let's see if some meta^x-contrarian is going to argue with this :)
This also applies to login via Facebook Connect. They change the rules on this sometimes, and don't give much warning beyond a post on their dev blog.

Guess who your users blame when all of a sudden they can't log into your site anymore with their Facebook account?

We user RPX/Janrain to deal with this, but we still get burned sometimes nonetheless.
Airplane mode is safe but it is problamatic when it comes to enforcing. There's no way for a flight attendant to tell whether idevice is in flight mode.

>Or are you arguing that most people turn them off because they get told to and that is enough to mitigate the risk?

Yes, that's what I meant.
But that's the part I don't get; there's no "ban" at all! I can bring a bunch of phones on the plane and just not tell them about it. If they search my bags, they'll remove my 200ml of water citing "it's too dangerous" but they'll leave the cellphones alone.

That's not much of a "ban". So I still disagree that phones could interfere in any meaningful way with any aircraft's systems.
You're correct!

But I didn't say I'm standing the same shoes. I said I'm going to see if I can do another startup.
Well actually I think it's better than jamming the newest (insert band here) album and not be able to hear much other than that and a very dim amount of engine noise.

I think it is safe to say it's likely a combination of many things - this coupled with statistics (as mentioned before, very small % failure rate + very large flight volume = enough dead people to warrant having them turned off) seems the most plausible.

Not to mention that someone linked that it could very well be a problem with the cellular networks - if (hypothetically) you could bugger up an entire major tower with enough "hop" volume, I can see why the FAA or other organization would just want to have this as a cover-our-ass precaution, too.
Wow, that really brings it home to me, as I live just a few streets away from Halton Moor...
I don't know but just remember you still need a minimum level of interaction to stay positive. I think introverts are less sensitive to loneliness but it can still cause depression, they just don't notice until it's too late like a frog in boiling water. If you're feeling down, forget your damning logical analysis of your life's accomplishments and just go meet some friends. Works like magic.
Don't let these guys get to you. Focus on being the best candidate and they'll naturally want you to move (and you'll have the leverage to ask them to pay).

An alternative is that you pay for yourself to move out there prior to the job hunt. :)
Wouldn't that just mean the policy should be put them away not turn them off?
I agree (although I'm not in the valley).

It is unfair in the sense of "unfair advantage." Of course I'll exploit it -- I'd be stupid not to -- but it's unfair.

This is exactly why increasingly it's hard to do a startup without teaming up with someone with a reputation. Maybe this just proves that.
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One theme of many lesswrong articles is to identify possible human biases. This article seems to be consistent with that theme. The article simply posits a possible bias.

Do you think that those who first hypothesized about and described confirmation bias wanted to throw dirt or find a label for their opponents? Do you think that identifying human biases is not a worthy activity?

I’m not really sure why you seem to be so enraged about this article. Your belief that signaling doesn’t show itself in much of human behavior is fair enough and a valid criticism. I just don’t think that ad hominem was necessary. At least provide some evidence, some quote as to why you think the author wants nothing but to throw dirt.
We allow our customers to use WordPress v3.0.1, which means either with OR without MU. Up to you.

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From the press release for a Carnegie Mellon study in 2006:

"We found that the risk posed by these portable devices is higher than previously believed," said Bill Strauss, who recently completed his Ph.D. in EPP at Carnegie Mellon. "These devices can disrupt normal operation of key cockpit instruments, especially Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are increasingly vital for safe landings." Strauss is an expert in aircraft electromagnetic compatibility at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.

http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060228_cellphone.html

It's true that no crashes have been positively linked to cell phone use, but it's also true that black box recorders don't measure RF interference so it would be difficult to do so.

edit: and here's a link to the whole paper http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-ai...

In one telling incident, a flight crew stated that a 30-degree navigation error was immediately corrected after a passenger turned off a DVD player and that the error reoccurred when the curious crew asked the passenger to switch the player on again.
The airframes might be, but they definitely have been upgraded/retrofitted with newer gear.

My favorite is the industrial, hardened switch for 'Internet Off' on Delta flights with onboard Wifi now (which I can't believe I can't find a picture of!).

If I can use WiFi on the plane while it's flying, why not while it's taking off and landing?
Facebook documentation SUCKS!
I think they do this on purpose - rapidly changing apis, and having poor or overly verbose documentation is a way to weed out all but the largest development companies, thereby reducing support costs, and allowing partnerships with the big companies that survive. It's right from microsoft's playbook.
btw, the reason we don't use public key is simple: thimble.net stores no user data. none.
That is because they want you to have all your senses (especially hearing so they can give you instructions) during take-off and landing; the most dangerous parts of any flight.

It has nothing to do with the MP3 players themselves.
Not really.

Planes are removed from service, every internal bit is replaced every few years.
Or maybe I am an AMBIVERT - someone shifting between Extro and Intro. Being new to the term it does sound alluring, but kind of defies the whole purpose of placement...

But comparing to my biorhythms, which I have 16 years of experience with, it could seem there is a correspondence to the placement of my emotional highs and lows - high emotional curve plus high mental curve gives me the courage to stand in a crowd and feel comfortable (without the drained feeling afterwards). Whereas low emotional curve almost always spells Introvert.

Hmmm... more thoughts to receive.
Exactly. These deals were not really Apple vs. Google. The real contest was managers vs. employees. In this case managers were cooperating to suppress the pay of engineers. Now without this collusion, engineers are free to extract greater rents for their services.
Some of it is definitely conscious. In particular, a certain class of people "trying to break in" consciously spend above their means in order to be perceived as having the means. I have not encountered a whole lot of evidence that this works - I only know of it from the many cases where it didn't work, or worked just long enough to allow them to fail to express other qualities the "in" crowd has.

Similarly, a lot of the "new rich" commentary suggests a desire to flaunt success, Trump style, because the individual is acutely aware of how different their circumstances have become and wish to let others know they are no longer in their previous position. They are signalling that they have, in fact, "broken in".

However, the qualities they are signalling are generally not signalled by the natural members of the group, who merely express them. These members may unconsciously signal other things, such as slang.

In other words, those who are aware of different levels may signal a level consciously. Others will not, beyond expressing the qualities that define them as of the level. A curious person might be contrarian, while an experienced one could be simplistic. Here, the "above average" one will be expressing, while the "intelligent" one is applying and the pragmatic one would be signalling (authority). Conscious signals tend to be hollow by necessity, and targeted at a specific level.
I was thinking of this 2 days ago, when I decided to leave Runkeeper running in my pocket :)
That is a foolish conclusion.

Firstly, if the TSA searches your bags and actually finds a "bunch" of cell phones, I bet that they will find an excuse to hassle you about it.

Secondly, your own example shows how shoddy this reasoning is; the TSA is not rational* about what they confiscate and what they don't -- your water isn't dangerous, and they took it, so why would you trust their judgment on cell phones?

Thirdly, the cell phone industry moves much faster than the airline security industry, so it's (vaguely, remotely) possible that some new phone released yesterday is dangerous, whereas old models aren't; the airlines wouldn't know the difference. One could say the same for almost all consumer electronics. So it would be hard to ban "bad" electronic devices and allow "OK" ones, and probably not worthwhile. Banning them all is an option, but just because it's a risk doesn't mean it's enough of a risk to be worth addressing.

*At least, they aren't rationally trying to prevent planes from being hijacked or interfered with; maybe they are doing a good job at other things, like making people feel warm fuzzies about security.
It's funny to see its always guys getting on their high horses yelling how misogynistic everyone is.
The article talks about low skilled IT jobs (desktop management, support, etc.) rather than dev jobs, but low skilled developer jobs could be consider things like standard CMS customization, db migration scripts, web-scraping, simple psd2html work. Basically legwork stuff that's pretty mechanical but still needs a human to do it.
Agree, GOOG is just one scrappy startup away from irrelevance. The company is locked in a Red Queen race with the very content spammers it subsidizes, and its search results are only incrementally better than they were in 1999. Google's income is heavily leveraged on its search traffic, and if/when that collapses the company will go with it.
Nonsense. If people could live forever then they would have less children instinctively. How often is a new Einstein born (or Steve Jobs for that matter)? Was it great that Einstein died?

Living forever, or even 10 times longer than we do now would change so many variables there is no way to know what all would be affected.
The water bottle thing is not airlines' doing as far as I know. It's to do with your countries national security authority.

Emirates allows mobile phones on some of their flights.
I think it also tries to copy Yegge's writing style :)
This is strictly anecdotal evidence, but I'll throw in my 2 cents here. I have a private pilot certificate and am working toward an instrument rating right now, which involves being in continuous contact with air traffic control, flying in low / zero visibility conditions, and relying on aircraft instruments to guide me on landings.

On numerous(if not all), I've had my iPhone with me, switched on and even in my lap at times(to use the stopwatch). Occasionally I would keep it in airplane mode on extended flights, but only to conserve battery life. Despite incoming calls and SMSs during these flights, not once have any of the instruments been affected by the phone.

We can all agree that a four-seater Cessna and 767 are very different, but for nav/comm they all use the same instrument systems. I would find it very hard to believe that a larger aircraft wouldn't have more shielding / protection than a simple Cessna with a phone that's just two feet away.

One more thought: Federal Aviation Regulation 121.306 states that no portable electronic devices are allowed except for: portable voice recorders, hearing aids, heart pacemakers, and electric shavers. How are the first and last any different from a phone in airplane mode?
It seems like a cultural issue. We were at an event on Tuesday where they let us know about a host of API changes relating to apps specifically, but when I got back and emailed asking for some documentation (even anything internal), all I got was a "we'll get back to you."

Ironically (or maybe not), part of the presentation was a slide featuring a workgroup with a "Done is better than perfect" poster. Well, yeah, but when you're running a platform service...
I found myself completely stymied once that article got to the section about death. I haven't read their other articles on the subject, but they seem to find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks that death is ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'. That seems insane to me. Does anybody think that a world without death—or even human death—would be less than hellish? Is it really false wisdom to be glad that living things, or living people, do not infinitely multiply, age, expand, consume resources? Or even false wisdom to try to see the good in the death of an individual?

Further, the author takes it as uncontroversial that it is 'wrong' to dwell on the problems of modern industrial society, and hypothesizes that one would only do it in order to signal one's intelligence. They don't think it would be useful—indeed, necessary—for many people to spend a lot of time thinking about the ills of A just because you can conclude that it is a greater good than not-A? Is that really the only way that it works? If I mention that industrial society destroys the environment and alienates the individual, then my argument must be, 'therefore, it is ultimately an evil, and we should scrap it for unelectrified villages.'

I like the way the author illustrates the signalling effect in terms of consumption, culture, and even cocktail party conversation; but I'm not sure the mechanism is quite as strong as they think.

Another way of putting it is: a lot of the intellectual arguments that the author likes to cast as counter signalling games can just as easily be characterized as successive philosophies and arguments that respond to the facts available to them and the values of the societies in which they arise. You COULD say that very intelligent people who don't want to give aid to Africa are motivated by a need to counter-signal the rather intelligent people who do; or you could say that they are motivated by their own understanding of the best way to increase the economic condition in Africa. If both of those could be said of any person, what value does this psychological model really have?