U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe | Hacker News Reader

U.S. To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights from Europe

thedailybeast.com

73 pointsrunesoerensen20 comments

Open articleView on HN

This is a non-story, at least so far, but you have to read well into the text to find that out.

Title: "U.S. to Ban Laptops"

Subtitle: "Homeland Security has decided"

Body: "No final decisions have been made"

There's unnamed sources inside DHS that told the Daily Beast that the official decision is going to be made Thursday.

The official statement is short enough that they wouldn't technically be lying if they then came out Thursday with a laptop ban.

I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

One of the clearest litmus tests for HN-offtopicness is "is this an announcement of an announcement". The present case is like that, only weaker.

We can turn that around and put it positively: patience till a thing actually happens is good for story quality.

Well that is me completely putting a blacklist on any travel to the US for work or pleasure. This is just going to far.

Its a shame, I really love going to America for tech events, but there is no way I am going check my laptop into luggage.

This is absolutely going to decrease travel to the US.

- More people will need to buy hard-shell cases. Would you want to trust your over-the-should bag to the ravages of the bag-handling machines? I certainly wouldn't...

- Would you want to risk having your laptop stolen/lost/damaged by checking it?

This would be a complete nightmare for business travelers.

Business travellers with stateside offices will probably be told to leave their data on the intranet and their laptop at home, they'll get a loaner in the US. There's a market here for someone to start a rental laptop business (just like rental cars at airports), but any intelligent business would never allow their employees to touch such a laptop..

I've actually been interested in affordable laptop rentals for a while but haven't found anything worthwhile, mostly lease to own. Has anyone encountered this done well yet?

And this is exactly what the Bannon wing of the admin wants.

> And Patrick Ky, a European safety regulator, told Reuters that his agency wants airlines to avoid placing all the electronic devices in checked baggage being in the same container in the cargo hold.

How on earth are they are going to handle the logistics of that?

The express train of irrationality that is this administration has finally & thoroughly plowed indiscriminately through partisans of all stripes.

"Finally" seems a bit optimistic. This kind of wolf-crying and security theatre has been the norm for a while in the states.

So many things that don't make sense. Why not flights leaving the U.S. to Europe? Why not flights to and from Asia, South America, etc...?

Maybe they're saving those other bans for when they need to distract us from other news stories again.

Honestly, I wonder when we'll start seriously considering and investing in alternative ways of travel. Blimps, boats, whatever. At some point the amount of regulation will be too much.

Hey, maybe this can save the dying tablet market?

Not just no, but hell no.

33 incidents in what, 5-10 million flights?

incidents of accidental fire, which can be put out if it happens in the cabin, but can't if they're in the cargo hold

I guess the theory is that a laptop bomb in the cargo hold is less likely to be near a structurally important part of the plane, whereas if you have a laptop bomb in the cabin with you, you can shove it right up against a window...

if twenty people use laptops to get 3 hours of work done on a flight, at $100/hour that's $6B in lost work every million flights.

Sounds like a lot to pay to slightly reduce the risk of a plane being blown up. And increase the chance of a cargo hold fire much more significantly.

Right. We have a challenge to handle it in the cabin. For safety reasons we put these things into the hold where we can't handle them at all. Makes perfect sense.

Any why only over the Atlantic and not Pacific? What about the routes to Australia?

Aren't many/most IEDs utilizing cell phones? Where's the rationale in banning a laptop if you can make one out of something even smaller and more ubiquitous? Hell, I bet you could stuff plenty of explosive material into one of the more expensive Otterbox cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com