[HN Gopher] Lufthansa abandons AirTag ban
___________________________________________________________________
Lufthansa abandons AirTag ban
Author : rbanffy
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-10-14 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Idk this doesn't bode well - for Ars Technica. Don't they have
| news to report that they pull these nothingburger stories out of
| thin air? What has become of the Ars of John Siracusa with his
| legendary Mac OS reviews?
| duxup wrote:
| What's the nothing burger?
|
| The story was all over HN and other sites.
|
| Following up on what the actual policy is and how wonky it is
| to announce on your official twitter "Hi David, Lufthansa is
| banning activated AirTags from luggage as they are classified
| as dangerous and need to be turned off./Mony" and later having
| to clarify that it wasn't accurate ...
|
| All that seems like legitimate news.
| danpalmer wrote:
| From what I've read Lufthansa never banned AirTags, regardless of
| what a misinformed customer service person on Twitter may have
| thought.
|
| They clarified their guidelines to say that active transmitters
| were not allowed in the hold because they couldn't be put on to
| flight mode (pretty much correct according to ICAO guidelines),
| and then after all this blew up later clarified their position by
| confirming that AirTags do not count (also correct).
| croes wrote:
| But why do AirTags not count?
| danpalmer wrote:
| The guidelines are targeted at phones and other long range
| transmission equipment. AirTags use Bluetooth and have a
| relatively limited range, a very low transmission power, and
| don't really do much at all until they get pinged by another
| device.
|
| It's also been fairly well understood for a while now that
| Bluetooth is not a concern on flights, and it uses an ISM
| radio frequency which is specifically set aside so as to not
| interfere with things like planes and other critical
| communications infrastructure.
| anaganisk wrote:
| Even cellular dont, its more to protect towers in path
| being DDOsd by 100s of people at a time.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I've never seen a real citation for this, do you have
| one?
| anaganisk wrote:
| Its an FCC regulation, why would I need to cite it :p But
| anyway https://www.businessinsider.com/phone-airplane-
| mode-flight-e...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "protect against radio interference" is extremely vague,
| I want something better and also evidence someone has
| made an assessment/update to cell service at least as
| modern as 3G.
|
| "picking up service from multiple cell towers" seems like
| a guess if it's solely based on the above words, and also
| that's pretty different from planefuls of people arriving
| and overwhelming a tower.
| duxup wrote:
| >From what I've read Lufthansa never banned AirTags
|
| "Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage
| as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned
| off./Mony"
|
| https://twitter.com/lufthansa/status/1578879849577385984
|
| I think that's pretty explicit. Official policy somewhere else
| in the company might be different but it's hard to imagine how
| folks are supposed to know what is up when they say it clearly
| like that.
| danpalmer wrote:
| > regardless of what a misinformed customer service person on
| Twitter may have thought
|
| I'd suggest that their published guidelines are probably more
| reliable than the interpretation of those being communicated
| for convenience by customer service reps. That's not to say
| this didn't have an impact, it clearly did, and customers
| should be able to trust this, but most of the reporting on
| this has treated it like an active decision to ban a
| particular device by a large company, rather than a
| misinterpretation by one individual in response to a question
| about a specific device.
| duxup wrote:
| I think the "misinterpretation" is completely
| understandable considering their official outright said
| they banned them...
|
| This wasn't even an interpretation, they say outright
| they're banning them.
| prange wrote:
| What makes you think a customer service rep is operating
| the official Twitter account for a $40+BN company?
| danpalmer wrote:
| The fact that Twitter is a customer service channel, the
| tweet was sent with "Qualtrics Social Connect" which
| describes itself as a customer service tool, the fact
| that there was a personal sign-off on the tweet which big
| companies don't tend to do when they're making policy
| announcements, but that they do tend to do when a
| customer service rep is replying to a customer question.
| Plenty of large companies do this sort of support via
| their official account rather than through a dedicated
| support account, it generally provides a better customer
| experience because no one wants to look up an account
| like "LufthansaSupportEMEA".
|
| I'm not sure what makes you think this is not a customer
| service interaction?
| prange wrote:
| > the fact that Twitter is a customer service channel
|
| This is circular reasoning. Nowhere is it established
| that Twitter is a customer service channel.
|
| Other parts of your in your first paragraph makes sense,
| but are also non-obvious and reflect expertise and
| evidence collecting on your part.
|
| Plenty of large companies do also use Twitter for PR
| rather than customer service.
|
| Unless clearly stated otherwise, there is no reason for
| anyone to treat an official Twitter account as anything
| other than an official statement by a corporation, no
| different from their official blog, or website.
| duxup wrote:
| Not to disagree with your characterization of the tweet
| or response to the user, but what's the end point then?
|
| "Don't believe our official twitter account if you think
| customer service is involved?"
|
| I have trouble faulting anyone for believing what was a
| very clear statement on their official twitter account.
| tlogan wrote:
| If they just replied back and said "oh no - mistake: AirTags
| are allowed" then there will be no story. But they did not.
| So I called them and their customer support was not able to
| tell me. So I started believing that they really will not
| allow AirTags
| duxup wrote:
| The progression was really strange.
|
| There were some folks in the media who reached out to PR
| people at the airline, some got "don't know" others were
| told "that's not our policy" ... but nobody updated the
| official twitter account for a while.
|
| I agree 100%, just a mistaken tweet could have been solved
| with a timely new tweet.
| Move37 wrote:
| They are just afraid of more hate online
| Fendii wrote:
| Yes the online hate. This crazy online hate.
|
| Just that 99% of normal people were probably not even aware.of
| this topic but hey online hate
| kbelder wrote:
| They're not afraid of _normal_ people.
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Hate when "interpretation" of regulations are used to cover
| questionable service or opportunities to improve
| kazinator wrote:
| This is like the French Canadian story of the Black Dog of Jean
| Labadie.
|
| The character Jean Labadie is a good storyteller, who spins a
| vivid tale about a black dog, which doesn't actually exist. The
| people in his village believe it and start spreading rumors about
| it. People claim to have seen it, and even to have been bitten by
| it. Calls grow louder for something to be done about the
| ferocious animal as the false rumor spreads out of control. In
| the end, Jean has to shoot the nonexistent animal to calm the
| uproar.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Article and title well on form for a cesspool like Arstechnica.
| ehPReth wrote:
| why is it a cesspool?
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Lufthansa has not banned AirTags_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33134737 - Oct 2022 (247
| comments)
|
| _Lufthansa bans AirTags in checked luggage_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127459 - Oct 2022 (599
| comments)
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is it even possible to ban AirTags? How exactly would that work?
| Even if you made the cargo hold a literal faraday cage,
| presumably as soon as you move the luggage the mesh network will
| be active again and immediately reconcile the location, which is
| what the user would want anyway.
| duxup wrote:
| Possible to detect.
|
| Question would be how much compliance they would get, or mass
| non compliance that it becomes a hassle to deal with.
| capableweb wrote:
| Same way illegal drugs are banned, pass everything through a
| scanner that detects the illegal thing. In this case, it would
| a UWB (and/or BLE and/or NFC, AirTags seems to use all three
| technologies) detector that flags any bags for manual
| inspection.
|
| Not saying banning it is right/wrong, just that there
| definitely is a way of detecting them if you really want to.
| endisneigh wrote:
| How would you distinguish devices that use the sake protocols
| from the AirTags with the current scanners? There would
| likely be thousands in an airport at a given time.
|
| How would you stop someone from taking out the battery and
| replacing it after security, or cross airline luggage
| transfer of devices with AirTags?
|
| Enforcement of a ban without customs level scrutiny seems
| impractical.
| capableweb wrote:
| The bags travel on a conveyor belt, which passes through a
| scanner that scans one bag at a time. Whenever there is
| something detected, you know exactly which bag trigger it
| and it gets redirected to another conveyor belt.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but the scanners are to my knowledge not designed
| to look for something like an AirTag (they are glorified
| x ray machines). Not to mention that doesn't cover
| luggage that's not checked in, or a litany of other
| situations like luggage from airlines that don't ban
| AirTags.
|
| It would be more difficult to implement than say banning
| bringing a gallon of water.
| delecti wrote:
| It's absolutely possible to ban AirTags, it may or may not be
| possible to perfectly enforce that ban.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I won't be flying Lufthansa anytime soon.
|
| I don't want to entrust my life and my baggage to a company so
| incompetent.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > I don't want to entrust my life and my baggage to a company
| so incompetent.
|
| even supposing the stories were true and accurate, if this is
| enough to get you to never use an airline, which ones are left
| for you to use?
| zucked wrote:
| Yeah, you're right - managing PR and a social media presence is
| a direct correlation to operating airplanes with a relatively
| stellar safety record:
|
| > (Lufthansa has)"one fatal air crash, one non-fatal crash, and
| two hull losses noted since 1989" (1)
|
| (1) JACDEC,
| https://www.jacdec.de/Order/2021_JACDEC_AIRLINE_RISK_RANKING...
| ciabattabread wrote:
| How is Germanwings Flight 9525 (Lufthansa Group) counted
| under this system?
| zucked wrote:
| Good question - at first blush it doesn't appear that it
| is. I wonder if that's because it was declared a deliberate
| act by the pilot and was not due to plane/pilot
| error/safety. I did a surface level dive on the source's
| methodology and didn't see it called out explicitly.
|
| Point taken, though - you could say that the PiC of that
| flight might not have been had they better
| process/procedures.
| anaganisk wrote:
| Lol imagine distrusting an airline, pilots, ICAO, ATC, ground
| crew, Airbus/Boeing because they placed a ban on airtags.
| lutoma wrote:
| ... because they banned AirTags? That seems a bit of an
| overreaction.
| poochy wrote:
| Especially because it sounds like they didn't actually ban
| AirTags
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from
| luggage as they are classified as dangerous and need to be
| turned off./Mony
|
| - https://twitter.com/lufthansa/status/1578879849577385984
|
| Certainly you can understand why people thought they did
| though, right?
| poochy wrote:
| I certainly can! Sounds like there was confusion even
| within Lufthansa about their own policy, or rather how
| AirTags fit into a broader less specific policy
| Fendii wrote:
| Your logic is flawed.
|
| If they really did it like mentioned than they did everything
| right: banning it then analysing it and then greenlighting it
|
| If the analysis would have shown an issue you would have been
| protected BY Lufthansa and standing up vs just not caring.
| InTheArena wrote:
| You swallowed the yellow irrational outrage pill. Lufthansa had
| a customer service rep who (correctly) stated that things with
| transmitters must have a airplane mode (also true) - without
| knowing enough about airtags.
|
| Now you are assigning an emotional context ("entrust my life",
| "incompetent") to a simple question of if Airtags apply?
| duxup wrote:
| >a customer service rep who (correctly) stated that things
| with transmitters must have a airplane mode
|
| That doesn't appear to be what they said:
|
| https://twitter.com/lufthansa/status/1578879849577385984
| junon wrote:
| "awkwardly"? "baffling face plant"?
|
| Come on Ars...
| shapefrog wrote:
| You Won't Believe These 10 Tricks Headline Writers Use to Get
| Clicks.
| junon wrote:
| But this is Ars. Typically considered above these sorts of
| things.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Ars is kind of a dumpster fire, try browsing their articles
| without an ad blocker. They're kings of shifting content.
| tremon wrote:
| Your expectations are a few years out of date. Follow the
| link at the top of the page to update.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Classic. Someone gets a lower-level customer service rep on
| twitter to make a statement based on incorrect and incomplete
| information about Airtags in compliance with regulation.
|
| Media blows it up into this insane thing, that Lufthansa is evil,
| and doesn't want you to track your bags, so they can lose it with
| no repercussions.
|
| Lufthansa clarifies things (once again, in line with law) - and
| then the media uses works like "face plant", "baffling" and
| "awkward". Assigning emotional context that ridicules Lufthansa.
|
| This plays out all the time with the media and is a huge part of
| the reason why confidence in the media is at a all time low.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Lufthansa deserves it. Worst airline I've ever flown (and
| that's saying something being from Canada).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is my preferred Airline, but I'm usually flying business
| so maybe that's the difference
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| There was nothing wrong with the flight itself. Everything
| wrong with their online booking/check in system,
| disorganization at the terminal and lost luggage
| (apparently due to system incompatibility with a partner
| airline).
| idontpost wrote:
| nominusllc wrote:
| Yeah, not sure why this commenter is rushing to their
| defense. Out of all PR fumbles, this one is the fumblest.
| [deleted]
| h0h0h0h0111 wrote:
| easyjet wants a word
| kmlx wrote:
| one word: ryanair.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Haha except expectations are managed (read low) with
| EasyJet or Ryanair. They deliver exactly what you pay for
| and expect.
| h0h0h0h0111 wrote:
| Of course fully anecdotal, but my experiences with
| ryanair have been mostly fine - the planes are shit and
| they try and sell you bollocks on board but they run on
| time and it all kinda works. Easyjet on the other hand...
| mamma mia, getting a refund out of them is a gauntlet,
| and at my local airport >50% (!!!!) of easyjet flights
| are delayed or cancelled.
| monksy wrote:
| Would still fly with easyjet despite having a sour
| experience with them.
|
| I will not consider LH metal for any reason.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| When it comes to airlines, you can pick any brand, and if you
| mention them, there will be at least one person who will
| chime in with a horror story and claim they're the worst
| airline.
|
| And it's usually based on a single one-off bad experience.
| pc86 wrote:
| Is AirCanada bad? I have a big flight on there in a few
| months (honeymoon) and it's gotten rescheduled numerous times
| but otherwise service has seemed fine.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > it's gotten rescheduled numerous times
|
| Well there you go...
|
| It's bad in the sense that they constantly reschedule or
| cancel flights, are constantly late and there's absolutely
| no recourse to getting compensation.
|
| But once you're on the plane it's mostly fine.
| uluyol wrote:
| I have had a nightmare dealing with their customer service.
| Hour and half holds, dropped calls, inconsistent messaging,
| losing my information (personal address e.g. despite it
| being on an incident tracking website), lack of
| communication, difficulty with partner airlines getting
| ahold of them.
|
| I took a Lufthansa+Air Canada trip because it was $300ish
| cheaper than the alternatives and I regret it. I also know
| many people personally who have had terrible experiences
| this past summer.
|
| My suggestion would be to rebook if possible, but it might
| not be too bad since the summer is over. Either way I hope
| things go smoothly.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| When things go right AC is fine. When things go wrong, do
| not expect anyone to have any empathy or be willing to help
| you in any way that is even slightly outside regular
| operating procedure.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure one anecdotal experience turns it into the
| absolutely worse airline of planet Earth. Worse than Air
| Koryo even.
|
| Most customer rankings disagree with you. Which doesn't mean
| the airline should be free from criticism, of course.
| moviewatcher333 wrote:
| Air Koryo apparently offers more leg space than most
| Canadian airlines, and I have a feeling any staff getting
| caught stealing luggage would be in some deep shit. Food
| pics look decent too.
|
| I've had decent experiences with "crappy" poor country
| airlines--oftentimes they compensate with decent food and
| seats often feel relatively spacious. Probably more likely
| to crash and die, though.
| monksy wrote:
| If they get you to point A->B without misconnecting,
| getting your bags there, and don't act angry with you.
| Still better than LH.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I mean when they lost our luggage as well as that of
| everyone else on the same connection they literally told us
| their computer tracking system was incompatible with that
| of their partner... On top of terrible treatment at the
| Frankfurt Airport, children running up and down the aisles
| for 10 hours straight on the plane, etc...
|
| > Most customer rankings disagree with you
|
| They're higher than expected but not in the top 10 of any
| rankings I've seen... And dropping...
| tomg wrote:
| Just another anecdote: They're the only airline to lose
| my luggage, and their complete lack of giving a fuck or
| competence in returning it was a tremendous and expensive
| pain in the ass. Only through pulling a personal favor
| with a friend in Berlin was I able to ever get my
| luggage.
|
| There's something wrong at Lufthansa. The queue to fill
| out my lost luggage form was like an hour long when I
| arrived, and looked to be just as long when I was done.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah you definitely deserve to complain about that
| experience. Though I've heard about tracking
| incompatibility issues (not with them though) - does not
| excuse the luggage loss of course
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| https://www.insider.com/woman-lost-luggage-lufthansa-
| twice-o...
|
| Another example. I could excuse a lot but after what the
| employee told us, the visible lack of organization when
| we flew with them plus quite a few more anecdotes I'm
| definitely avoiding them. Seems there's something
| fundamentally wrong with their infrastructure. Hell, the
| airtag thing blew up for a reason.
| tlogan wrote:
| I do not know... it seems like Lufthansa messed up here.
|
| Lufthansa official twitter account clearly said: "Hi David,
| Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage as they are
| classified as dangerous and need to be turned off./Mony"
|
| So are you saying that official Lufthansa twitter account is
| some low level employee? So I should not trust messages posted
| on their twitter account?
|
| I fly Lufthansa a lot and I follow their twitter account
| thinking that is official account to update me rafting
| different rules (COVID, etc.)
|
| If they made a mistake that is ok: they should imeditatelly
| tweet again and said that. There will be no "crazy media". But
| nope - nobody even customer service (I call them) did not know.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| The normalization of clickbait everywhere is so disheartening.
| Including on HN. I have to click through to the comments and
| find the one correcting for the hyperbole and fake extreme
| emotions used in the title.
|
| It is exhausting and I refuse to click through such titles -
| but nowadays that's almost all of them.
| TillE wrote:
| It's definitely scummy journalism, but there's also a little
| misunderstanding in how social media reps work in Germany vs
| elsewhere.
|
| Basically in Germany, they tend to operate with considerably
| more autonomy. It is not uncommon to see official Twitter
| accounts arguing with customers, where in the US you'd probably
| just get a canned response or ignored if you're sufficiently
| rude. So I'm not surprised that someone like this decided to
| interpret policy by themselves, and failed.
| monksy wrote:
| > , they tend to operate with considerably more autonomy.
|
| That's one way to put it.
|
| Another way to put it is:
|
| > They tend to operate without much oversight or ethical
| boundaries.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Anothernother way to put it is:
|
| > They seem more approachable with possibly more positive
| interactions.
| monksy wrote:
| I'm not sure how to communicate this without making it
| sound biased.
|
| Lufthansa's employees regularly act poorly and
| maliciously, when pointed out that they are in the wrong
| (weither local, foreign, or own company regulations or
| even being there when they're scheduled to) they don't
| care and they know they'll get away with it. They can and
| will leave you at the airport without a refund. It's been
| this way for at least a decade.
|
| This has happened to me many times, and it has many
| documented cases on HN, Reddit, Twitter, settled EU261
| suits, and FlyerTalk.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I get what you are trying to say here and generally I agree
| with the context you are trying to add, but so long as
| corporate entities have personhood rights, I think we should
| treat the putative monoliths as what they claim to be for the
| purposes of assigning blame, otherwise we make it too easy to
| escape accountability.
|
| In other words: this was not the actions of some random low
| level person at Lufthansa, this was the actions of Lufthansa
| because it was an authorized person speaking on authorized
| channels. If they spoke incorrectly, that is within their power
| to fix and prevent from happening again.
| nmilo wrote:
| Then maybe it's time that lower-level customer service reps
| stop running official company twitter accounts. Maybe you and I
| see it differently, but most of the world sees a company's
| twitter account as _the_ official source of information and
| fast-paced updates. It has as much significance as a press
| release from the CEO or an announcement on the company website.
| So if the lower-level customer service rep fucks up, outrage is
| warranted because they should have gotten someone more
| competent to run the account in the first place.
| INTPenis wrote:
| You're going after the wrong people here. Journalists hungry
| for clickbait can't wait for incompetent customer reps to
| tweet some stupid shit. So the "journalist" can blow it out
| of proportion. It's literally their bread and butter.
| monksy wrote:
| Normally I would agree with you.
|
| Until there is new information presented, I will continue
| to assert that they have not changed. (That first part of
| the sentence is copied from verbatim from a CSR email when
| explaining an exceptionally bad experience with them)
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I think you're both right in different ways -- part of the
| problem is operations...
|
| A friend of mine operates social media (at a tactical level)
| for a very large company and it sounds like they have a good
| set of operating guidelines in place to prevent problems like
| Lufthansa has here.
|
| Now, most of his job is just replying to the same questions
| all day long (and he has a small team of people to handle the
| volume). All of the information they give out has been pre-
| approved, but once in awhile something new comes along and he
| runs it up the flag pole to marketing and/or legal before
| adding it to his list of approved replies.
|
| Additionally, he works with the communications department,
| sales, and marketing to create planned communications. His
| expertise is in social media, and he guides the
| communications from the other departments on what will work
| well on social media. But he rarely comes up with the actual
| message.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| > but once in awhile something new comes along and he runs
| it up the flag pole to marketing and/or legal before adding
| it to his list of approved replies.
|
| Of course one of the reasons everything has to be an
| approved response and you cant get "plain answers" from
| companies or politicians for that matter is shitty
| journalists looking for something they can take out of
| context and blow out of proportion.
|
| Journalism is it's own worst enemy sometimes.
| tlogan wrote:
| Mistake happens. if the lower-level customer service rep
| fucks up, you just tweet again saying that it is wrong.
|
| But they said nothing. For about 6 days. And on their twitter
| accout I do not see: hi so sorry we made mistake. AirTags are
| allowed.
| mjhay wrote:
| Social media managers form an important work program for
| executive's fail-nephews, so I don't think what you are
| suggesting is realistic.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| "executive's fail-nephews" is still much better than what
| it really is, which is usually underpaid slaves in boiler
| rooms in third-world countries right next to the phone scam
| call centre.
| duxup wrote:
| Possibly.
|
| But companies want people to pay attention to their twitter
| accounts and take them seriously right?
|
| Can't suddenly decide they don't want them to ...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Companies want a Twitter account at all, but are forced
| into it because of customer expectations
| duxup wrote:
| I worked for a company who had sales running the twitter
| account.
|
| Sales wanted the tech support folks (me included) to
| answer questions ... but the nature of the setup always
| included a TON of needed background information. So we
| just trained the sales drones to teach them how to
| efficiently shepherd the customers through the process of
| opening a ticket / open one for them and etc.
|
| It kept the twitter stream to mostly sales type stuff,
| that worked.
| ramblerman wrote:
| No, outrage is warranted when countries go to war.
|
| This kind of nonsense activism hurts us all.
| duxup wrote:
| That's now how I read this playing out at all...
|
| >Someone gets a lower-level customer service rep on twitter
|
| You mean the person who posts to the verified Lufthansa twitter
| account?
|
| https://twitter.com/lufthansa/status/1578879849577385984
|
| This doesn't seem like some low level rep that got called up to
| get manipulated.
|
| I think the lesson here is that if your verified twitter
| account says something ... people take it seriously.
| offsign_p wrote:
| Or the lesson is very little good can come for using Twitter
| as a medium for "news"
| duxup wrote:
| I think it was quite interesting news. If you took the
| airline at their word folks would want to know about that.
| relativ575 wrote:
| You get me read the article. Here is the timeline according to
| the article:
|
| 1) Lufthansa said Airtag was banned:
|
| "Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage
| as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned
| off./Mony"
|
| 2) Lufthansa clarified why it banned AirTag:
|
| "According to ICAO guidelines, baggage trackers are subject to
| the dangerous goods regulations. Furthermore, due to their
| transmission function, the trackers must be deactivated during
| the flight if they are in checked baggage and cannot be used as
| a result. /Ana"
|
| 3) Lufthansa backtracked, implying that it was the government
| who was wrong and they only followed the rules:
|
| "The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt) confirmed
| today, that they share our risk assessment, that tracking
| devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked
| luggage do not pose a safety risk. With that these devices are
| allowed on Lufthansa flights."
|
| 4) Lufthansa confirmed with NYT that AirTag was allowed after
| all.
|
| All I can see is Lufthansa was wrong, double down, had to
| reverse the course with some vague excuses, and still haven't
| admitted they were wrong. What exactly is out of proportion?
| When they said they banned it without clear explanation, it
| inevitably opened the door to speculation, and lost luggage is
| an obvious explanation.
|
| I have to question your bias against the media here. As for
| using "face plant", "awkwardly", don't you see the walking back
| earlier tweets, but not admitting error, as anything but
| awkward?
| mobiledev2014 wrote:
| Ars has definitely gone downhill, both in-house stuff like this
| and in the spamming of other Cande Nast junk. What is today's
| Ars-of-10-years-ago?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Ars in 2008 was the place where people found out you could
| run arbitrary floating point computations on a GPU. I've
| never heard anyone talking about it but without those forums
| deep learning would still be this thing that looks
| interesting but is really hard to train at scale and no one
| bothers with.
| bleomycin wrote:
| Agreed. Unfortunately there don't appear to be any viable
| replacements. Ultimately I just read less in general now
| which sucks. I hate what the internet has become.
| coldpie wrote:
| I've been a paying subscriber since 2009 and I'm still happy
| with it. I agree this article is a dud and I could do without
| the Wired articles (thankfully they're easy to identify and
| skip even if you miss the by-line -- just look for the first
| paragraph that's all setup and zero content). But they still
| seem like a fine outlet for high-level science & tech news.
| monksy wrote:
| > Someone gets a lower-level customer service rep on twitter to
| make a statement based on incorrect and incomplete information
| about Airtags in compliance with regulation.
|
| I can't believe that someone pressured a lower level customer
| service. From my experience, they (the employees) decided to
| make up a new rule that benefited them.
| spfzero wrote:
| Yeah, Ars Technica has really gotten irritating over the past
| few years. I read the Rocket Report and that's about it these
| days.
| [deleted]
| ncr100 wrote:
| You really BLASTED the media there, @InTheArena!
|
| jk
|
| Yes - modern technology is making an objectively malformed
| economy and social signalling system.
|
| Still crossing fingers that there is a viable solution to
| populism.
| ebiester wrote:
| I'd rather the opposite: when luggage is checked in, a smart tag
| is attached. Then, it's retrieved right before leaving the
| luggage area, such that you know that the person who got the
| luggage is the right person.
|
| That said, that brings a lot of logistical complication and cost,
| and won't happen anytime soon.
| nijave wrote:
| Sort of like the inverse of restaurant "waiting for a table"
| pagers
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yeah, I work in security, and it's always been horrifying to me
| how easy it is for people to steal luggage.
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