Those terms have senses that people in aviation take extremely seriously, for extremely good reasons. A miscommunication can trigger a lot of life-critical emergency mode sudden effort and stress for people. Effort and stress that is occasionally extremely necessary.
It made sense, once I thought of it.
In this particular case, it sounds like it wasn't the teen's fault, nor even a teen being slightly edgy. Just an innocuous product that broadcast a very unfortunate name over Bluetooth. Not something most people would've predicted would be a problem.
Yet, under the circumstances, with the information available, it also sounds like personnel were correct to follow the processes that were designed to prevent terrible disasters.
Do you think terrorists are really going to name their Bluetooth speaker "bomb"? Do you think this behaviour has any meaningful true positives?
This is the kind of brainworms thinking that has people throwing our their 150ml liquids out at TSA and taking their shoes off.
> This is trying to sanewash totally insane levels of risk aversion.
| During this incident, a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.
We've just grown accustomed to security theater. Don't forget, this security theater has resulted in more deaths than 9/11 ever did[0,1,2]
[0] Indirectly. The friction in air travel leads to more people driving, which is objectively a more deadly form of travel. We're talking several orders of magnitude, so even a low percentage of people shifting from air travel to car means substantial numbers. That means your risk of dying or being injured in a car crash also increases because it means more people are on the road. It's not a function of how good of a driver you are, it is a function of how good of a driver they are. So you really do want more people flying
[1] https://www.govexec.com/management/2012/11/tsa-killing-us/59...
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=677549
2. Did the captain, flight control, and everyone else who needed to decide, have definitive information that the report was only an innocuous Bluetooth advertisement for an innocuous consumer device, and somehow knew that no other threat was going on? If not, then I'd commend whomever decided to follow protocol, and err on the side of inconveniencing a lot of people, rather than risk tragedies that the protocol was designed to prevent.
Demanding that people disable Bluetooth does not seem reasonable. If there's an actual bomber, tipping them off that you're reacting to their threat might lead them to set off the bomb early. Similarly, demanding that someone shut off the "Free Palestine, F Zionists" WiFi network or the flight crew will call the FBI is counterproductive; if that's cause to call the FBI, just call them. A warning lets the person cover their tracks.
For the record, "BOMB" is probably cause to call the FBI and "Free Palestine, F Zionists" by itself almost certainly isn't, but is something to mention when calling them about "BOMB".
- You have an actual bomb that's been slipped onto someone else's stuff that is cellphone triggered; perhaps when you get to UK cellular service, perhaps after cabin altitude + time, or whatever. Making the announcement doesn't hurt at all. You want to turn back in this case.
- You have a person who has a device with a name in bad taste, either because of humor or malice. Making the announcement doesn't hurt at all. You would rather not turn back in this case. They might turn it off.
- You have a person who is controlling the actual bomb on the plane. Making the announcement or turning back or even continuing -- it doesn't matter. Your moves are visible to them.
- 0.001%
- 99.998%
- 0.001%
I'm sorry, but the risk is just stupid low. There's only 2 lotteries in America that you have a better chance of winning than these absurdly conservative odds (no lottery if you use non-conservative statistics).
I'm sorry, but even if there were a dozen bombing attempts a year this would still be an absurdly safe activity given the shear volume of flights per day.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_a...
They probably do have to treat it seriously just in the unlikely chance it turns out to be some mentally unstable person's way of legitimately making a terroristic threat. But it also needs to be treated similarly to a drunk and violent person who needs to be duct taped to their seat until they can get handed off to the authorities.
Terrorists have a pretty long history of making these kinds of basic operational errors, and if you don't act like they may be real, you miss the opportunity to disrupt/prevent these operations.
If you act like they're real you're just going to end up suffering alarm fatigue because the number of actual instances is just so astonishingly low.
Besides that, the terrorists win by creating fear. No damage is necessary. People being afraid to fly is the terrorist's main goal. To get you to think they could be anywhere and are everywhere. It's called a terror campaign because the literal goal is to create terror. Casualties are just a good way for them to achieve that goal, but far from the only way. We spend billions a year to fight a near non-existent threat.
(1) Either you believe the threat is credible and you put it down at the nearest suitable airport in the least amount of time. Say Sydney at about 200km to your west, or FSP at 150km in the direction you're going (not a great fit, but doable). In both cases you could probably land within 20 minutes, a bit more if you aim for Gander (Fun history for that airport, great as an emergency diversion).
(2) or, you believe the threat is not credible. At this point you might as well continue the flight. Flying 90 minutes back does not seem (to me) to meaningfully reduce the risk if someone is actually planning to trigger a bomb anyway.
But I do know what it's like working in a draconian safety-crazy job where if you're caught not following a safety-related SOP you're basically fucked.
I can't blame them too much.
Protocol would be quietly diverting to the closest airport. They didn’t do that. They chugged back to Newark. After making a visible scene on the PA. This was a hissy fit.
I want to think the answer is both. But I cannot think of an example where #2 has actually happened in history resulting in injury or death.
The bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 (the Lockerbie bombing) was hidden inside a Toshiba 'BomBeat' RT-SF16 radio.
1. failing hard: Is $trigger_word in the context of an attack, or is it innocuous? Failing hard then assessing the context question later is at least a simple system to design and implement safely. And an adversary can't pentest it. I mean they can, but they'll fail hard every time no matter the context. And that is very expensive for the attacker.
2. failing soft: throw away your too large container of liquid. I'm not sure what this liquid container rule prevents. In any case, an adversary can pentest this as often as they can buy a ticket, and they'll just blend in with all the other grumpy passengers forced to throw out their containers of liquid and continue on through security.
3. don't touch the spaghetti makefile: add a specific rule about removing shoes after the relevant attempt at an attack. Also, let's keep it for decades because no politician wants the liability of having voted to remove a TSA rule in the case of a future attack.
Conflating these all under a single "brainworm" category tells me you are exactly the kind of person who shouldn't be in charge of designing a secure system!
Taboo is a shitty communication feature. Taboo demands active silence in a system with too much entropy for that to be feasible. It would be far superior to train everyone to say "good crash" (and respond appropriately) instead.
Words only have meaning in context. The whole point of instating a taboo is that you control the context. Rather than use that control to introduce danger to words, we should use it to isolate danger from words.
And as correctly mentioned by others, we shouldn’t be concentrating on an ideal game theory spherical terrorist in a vacuum.
Then you quietly divert to the nearest airport. Asking for the speaker to be turned off on PA and then chugging all the way back to Newark makes it plain nobody was acting seriously.
The staff's primary concern probably was not an actual bomb, but a prankster intentionally trying to create panic with elderly and technically illiterate.
If they knew it was a BT speaker, they wouldn’t have returned.
OTOH, who would name a bomb with a Bluetooth transceiver in a way that advertises its function. I’d use something like “pacemaker” so that nobody would ask me to turn it off.
You know how they ask you if you have any contraband or if you’re a terrorist or whatever?
You’d be surprised at how many people get busted because they answer truthfully
Would I? For contraband maybe with naive tourists who just don’t know that what they’re carrying is considered contraband, but I would love a source on a single terrorist being caught because they confessed after being asked in a form.
It's as if multiple airline employees' and other officials' brains were simultaneously unable to process any sentence that starts with "If it was an actual bomb, then why..."
Instead, everyone applied the same rudimentary "IF [bomb mentioned in any context] THEN [take the most extreme actions written in the playbook]."
Yes. Not every time. But some of the time. Like imagine someone likes to stay organized and they have a bunch of bluetooth devices and gives them all logical names, speaker for speaker, keyboard for keyboard and bomb for bomb. They make a mental note to change the name of bomb before deploying it but then life happens and they forget to fix it.
He added a fire emoji to one success message. When testers saw it they were afraid that the customer would think it was a thermal runway problem. Had to do a last-minute revision of the software before shipping the new version.
I was already pretty anti-emoji / personal touch / fun features / easter eggs in professional software. But having to pull a 2-hours overtime to crank out a new release definitely settled me on the side of never again.
edit: To be clear no one actually thought it was a problem, but our QA were very much serious about reducing any potential for confusion when dealing with >1million USD machinery.
Was this LLM-driven development? I'm so glad that phase is over.
That’s not a time and place.
Similarly there are various things like Aviation English for actual live comms, though they have less specifity, not to that level.
And yes, this is related to being clear and understandable both when communicating something live (you might have to dictate from a manual over the radio!) but also over native language barriers
But at the same time in the wake of these type of incidents and seeing how they are responded to, if I were a group that wanted to harm economic interests I'd invest in malware that I'd spend years silently spreading and then at some future date flip to a mode where infected devices detect when they are likely to be in-flight via GPS data and have them randomly change wifi hotspot and bluetooth identifiers to 'bomb' to inflict chaos and economic damage across a system that is apparently incapable of dealing with that.
I don't blame people who are responsible for the lives of others for overreacting in a one-off situation, but such overreaction could be weaponized.
Told to turn it off and refused to do so. Why are you defending the selfish little prick?
I understand protecting people’s sensibilities by avoiding these words. That part makes sense. Same basic politeness as not using curse words in my variable names.
But to turn an entire flight around because of a Bluetooth device name? How does that make any rational sense?
Look at it from a Bayesian perspective. There’s some probability P that there’s a bomb on a random plane. Now, given that a specific plane has a Bluetooth device named “bomb,” what is P for that specific plane?
I argue that P is unchanged. I’d be interested if anyone disagrees with this assessment.
Given the probability is unchanged, why do anything?
I don’t think even the people involved believed there was any danger. They had closer airports they could have diverted to. Going all the way back to Newark makes no sense if you actually think there’s an increased chance there’s a bomb on the plane that might detonate at any time, or a hijacker who might decide to make an attempt, or any other threat.
Going back to the origin airport instead of a closer one is what you do when there’s some mundane problem like the weather being unsuitable at the destination, or a non-critical equipment failure.
So how does this make any rational sense? It doesn’t. It’s performance. Everyone wants to be seen Taking Things Seriously. Nobody is permitted (either explicitly by rules, or implicitly by social expectations) to say “somebody is being a real jerk, but there’s no point in diverting.”
And also a new vector for a ransom-attack on the Bluetooth namespace in certain environments via malicious BLE advertising. The worst thing that could have happened here was for someone to take this seriously.
That is also stated clearly in the comments.
Reddit really wants to run with the default speaker name theory, though.
Actually sounds a lot like "that was the default name but now that everyone's making a big deal about it I'm assuming I must have named it that". I wouldn't assume that this "confession" means that reddit's theory is at all incorrect.
Witnesses are terribly inaccurate sources of information, unfortunately.
(Not to say the alternative also couldn't be the case)
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/louvre-secur...
This story is just stupid. If you actually think you have a bomb onboard, you divert to the nearest airport. (And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off.)
The pilots and crew knew they were being idiots. Whether due to power tripping or CYA, who knows, but I’m not surprised this happened on United.
That was the most hilarious part for me.
The article says two Bluetooth radios weren’t turned off. Do we know if one of those was “the bomb?”
Good point, I was thinking they were over the ocean and that was naturally the closest airport, but it looks like they could have landed in e.g. Nova Scotia in a shorter time period.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
It still feels incongruent with the reality of the situation in my opinion. I can hop on a bus with 200 other people, or on a train with literally 0 security carrying whatever I want in a bag with no staff nearby either.
It used to be much worse though. I think the new machinery has made the difference.
The bus/train is different because they're harder to weaponize. Everything we got was a response to the 9/11 attacks.
Those checkpoints are only there to provide a soft target instead of letting it be a plane.
“When ABC News asked the source if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, ‘You are in the ballpark.’”
You’d do something like that.
> would result in a prison sentence
That doesn’t seem like a significant deterrent here.
>> "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/continuing-anxi...
Getting a dozen of their operatives arrested for an idiotic prank that just resulted in a handful of planes being turned around would make them a laughingstock overnight.
I am baffled that we are even having this argument.
Significantly less dedicated supporters are generally used as a funding source, but actual terrorist organizations have also used them for publicity events on the anniversary of attacks.
There are many anecdotal examples out there. More scientifically, they had a horrific detection rate in some audits.
Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
Even then this is an extremely lame and ineffective form of sabotage, compared to the kind of prison sentence you’d be risking.
Nothing really.
I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
However I agree that in purely domestic airports I don't see how you'd prevent general public from accessing bags. Except India, wherein you need a booked flight to even enter the airport.
I don't understand this.
Why can't they have a door after the baggage claim that does not permit entry to the baggage claim area?
That's how things work in the UK.
In my local airport, the final part of leaving the arrivals area is the same for both international and domestic flights.
Passport control > Baggage claim (international) > Customs > One-way exit to landside
Baggage claim (domestic) > One-way exit to landside
People are routinely prevented from being where they are not supposed to be. Whether you put the baggage pick-up point in a publicly accessible area or on a restricted area is a design choice.
How do the arrivals exist the terminal
Are you not allowed to have a friend who is picking you up assist with baggage claim?
I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it.
It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
The only thing this accomplishes is making you the kind of asshole who interferes with other people that are just trying to make their flight on time. You are not highlighting flaws in the security system. You are not taking a principled ethical stance against tyranny. You are just acting like an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and making life just a little bit worse for everyone else around you.
This is not something to brag about. This is something to be ashamed of.
What’s the alternative? Lose track of my stuff or risk it being stolen?
You are being an asshole to prove a point. But I am going to assume that you are an intelligent person, and since you are, you know as well as I do that nobody you are treating this way is in a position to do anything about the situation. Nobody in line is going to empathize with your stand when you are disrupting their travel. You are doing this so you can feel high and mighty, but you know damn well it isn’t behavior that will induce change.
The alternative is to either a) allow others to pass until you witness your bag enter the scanner or b) accept that nobody is going to steal your stuff directly in front of law enforcement officials and just go through the scanner.
Stop acting like an asshole.
How is waiting for my turn to go through the metal detector or be patted down being an asshole? I arrived before the people behind me and I’m following the security procedures of the airport.
It explicitly says to keep your belongings in your position at all times. To keep your bags in view. In fact they ask you if you ever lost sight of your bags.
If people don’t want to wait in line for people following the rules then let them be inconvenienced to the point where they will get the rules changed to speed up the process.
But I’m not going to give in to the stupidity of the security rules and forsake my own belongings to accommodate someone who doesn’t care enough to either come early and deal with the potential ramifications of the rules their elected leaders have chosen for them.
What you are doing is the equivalent of paying some poor cashier in pennies while everyone behind you is forced to wait in order to get revenge for some decision made by executives ten rungs up the food chain.
It is childish and immature. And worse, it biases people against whatever point you’re trying to make in the first place. Please make the conscious choice to be a better person.
> It explicitly says to keep your belongings in your position at all times.
Since you are hell-bent on following all rules to the letter, you could at least commit to the bit and follow your luggage through the X-ray machine.
If you concede that it’s not reasonable to do so, then I think you’re capable of being adult enough to concede that neither is purposefully obstructing a bunch of other travelers for the sake of a pointless exercise.
How? I’ve seen idiots do this. I just go around and ahead of them.
By making everyone turn off their Bluetooth, the kid whose speaker had turned on probably couldn't even see the device broadcasting the name. People linked to one by a company made Hellotec but Hama has a similarly named device, and plenty of other speaker manufacturers try to make a pun out of "boombox" by naming their devices "bomb" (iJoy, ZEB-MUSIC, and presumably other such brands).
Maybe if someone asked the passengers if anyone knew about this "bomb" Bluetooth device the kid would've remembered, but in this case I can't blame them. On the other hand, asking passengers if they know something about a bomb is probably the quickest way to cause a panic.
The entire thing seems like a ridiculous overreaction. What kind of terrorist would call their bomb "bomb"? This is "Al Qaeda Free WiFi" all over again.
I know for certain if you change the setting General > About > Name in an iPhone it changes what everyone sees when they look at their list of available Bluetooth devices.
I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no? Otherwise how do you distinguish which one of the three million Bluetooth devices within range is your friends Bluetooth speaker you’re trying to connect to?
> I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no?
No. The iPhone is allowing you to configure what name it broadcasts. But you cannot just tell another device what to broadcast. That device must have its own mechanism for changing its name.
For example, many Apple wireless peripherals can rename themselves after your user account once you connect them at least once. That has to be a function of the peripheral though, it's not performed by the device you connect it to (past telling the peripheral the new name, of course). Third-party peripherals usually do not have this functionality.
What do you mean by ”usually” here?
I’m certain all the regular name brands, eg JBL Bose Sonos B&O etc enable the device itself to be configured with a user set name via their app. I’m certain because I’ve used them and done so.
As for other brands I own: Jlab, jawbone, pyle, and anker don't seem to have any such functionality that I can see.
So it's far from ubiquitous, sufficiently so that it makes no sense to presume that a bluetooth name is a message from a passenger and can be understood to have any intended meaning.
I don't see why people are hung up on this. Imagine even just 2 or 3 of the same model "JBL SpeakerName" nearby, how would you know whos is whos? Renaming is common.
...I mentally appended an "s" to that, and was momentarily very confused.
If it’s a commercial product doing it, I can’t even quantify the levels of facepalm involved.
It reminds me of when RED released a camera called Weapon, and I heard of people putting tape over the name when going through the airport.
In all likelihood the site being down right now is actually a PR win.
That, or they're such a small business that they never expected one of their random products to be HN hugged to death.
Which would violate FAA regulations if it was powered on (as it obviously was):
"When portable electronic devices powered by lithium batteries are in checked baggage, they must be completely powered off and protected to prevent unintentional activation or damage."
https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/portable-electronic-devi...
Without tools, its not exactly easy to point-point a Bluetooth signal. Nor are passengers meant to be roaming around the aircraft whilst in flight (i.e to access carry on luggage compartment and turn it off).
Real time insights from not one, but 9, redditors on the flight.
Main post: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/57lugEMhxl
All the redditors on board: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/Fh2KoqG4SY
A passenger with a hilariously illtimed username: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/W86tRI6ZVf
Is there a way for you to post proper direct links?
> All the redditors on board: https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
> A passenger with a hilariously illtimed username: https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
(Don't have the correct regex on hand right now, as I changed browsers and decided to use Old reddit redirect extension instead of scripting, but it worked in my previous browser)
^(\w*)://www.reddit.com/(?!r/[^/]*/s/|media|gallery|notifications|appeals)(.\*)
$1://old.reddit.com/$2Can't you just set the old theme in your profile? That's what I do.
Internal flights in New Zealand don’t need ID. So if you knew you were going to posting your terrible flight experience, you could fly under a fake name.
[1] - https://observer.com/2014/03/park-slope-kiddie-shop-hunts-fo...
America is basically Israeli's puppet at this point, can't let bad words being said about their masters
- Flight 767 returned to airport after seeing a bluetooth device named "BOMB"
- After asking all passengers multiple times to turn off all devices and not getting the "BOMB" to go away, they flight had to return to the airport where officials were waiting to search the plane.
- This was not intentional, but a product that calls it self "BOMB" https://hellottec.com/product/bomb-portable-bluetooth-speake...
- Passengers on the plane commented of the event as it was going on in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/s/57lugEMhxl
I guess I shouldn't pine, I can just have AI summarize all sources for me, and stop dealing with poor reporting that tries to drag 3 bullet points into multiple pages for the sake of selling ad space.
https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedairlines/comments/1tse6mq/ua_...
The hard part would be figuring out the worth of each submission. LLMs might be able to assign a price based on the importance of the fact submitted? and then subscription fee people pay is paid to the contributors. I guess you could also have people rate the inputs and base it on that. (what the readers found important.)
Wikinews closed up and went read-only on May 4, 2026:
https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_closes_Wik...
So if the person just takes back their bomb threat everything is ok? Or did they think the terrorist labeled their Bluetooth bomb “bomb” and this would disable it?
1. It was unintentional; someone had a bluetooth device called BOMB for some reason that made sense before boarding the plane. They would turn it off.
2. It was intentional; someone wanted to send a warning and chose this channel - they would leave the device on.
If airlines ignored every threat that was “probably not” a real threat, they’d ignore all of them. It’s better to inconvenience a few thousand passengers than it is to kill a few hundred.
Most security failures happen when people wait to take something seriously until it is “very clear” that something is wrong.
For example, there are many pieces of equipment that can be broken and they’ll still fly, because it’s not essential or there’s enough redundancy.
Child safety seats are not required even though they’d save lives, because the extra hassle and expense would cause some parents to drive instead, which is much more dangerous, leading to more overall deaths.
Normally the decisions are quite sensible. But the moment any “terrorism” enters the picture it all goes out the window.
But the chances are high, they do lose their job if they don't (and/or potentially lose their life as well).
It's that simple.
(regardless of how dumb/overreaction some might view this as)
I remember I was not allowed to use a laptop with a CD or DVD attached.
Now you have internet on board.
Would have been so much simpler.
“a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.”
I understand that the United States is actually a puppet for Israel, although the name on a Bluetooth device isn't really breaking any laws? It's not calling harm to someone, its not a threat. I thought America was the place of free speech?
Of course, someone planning to hijack a flight would probably never try to do so with WiFi ssid’s, not to mention that hardened cockpit doors and passenger attitudes mean that PLO style hijackings are now impossible.
Of course, telling people to turn off the network name (bomb, Palestine or otherwise) and everything will be fine, is a tacit admission that the whole thing is theater.
A completely-innocent Airtag speaks only bluetooth, and it can be activated from continents away -- as long as any Apple phone is nearby with a shred of Internet access.
My similarly-innocent Samsung phone is programmable (using its built-in Routines function) to perform actions in response to becoming disconnected from any given Bluetooth device.
Reliably bomb detonation is on the roadmap for Bluetooth 8.
- communicate in English (because apparently even ancient Romans speak perfect English)
- name the device “bomb”
Does the FBI usually get involved when someone says these words in public in the US?
That being said, I do think any cabin crew pitching a fit over such a hotspot name is absolutely in the wrong. That’s not a threat, that’s personal opinion, and it’s not the hotspot owner’s fault the crew conflates Zionist ideology specifically with Jewish Faith in general like an ignorant fool.
That's certainly not true in many European countries
This suprised me. I’ve hunted for polling and can find plenty showing a plummeting opinion on Israel, but little on internal polling about a Palestinian state.
In the USA, there are many, many firearms. And there's also a small but very vocal cadre of people who would like to disarm the people. In light of this, if a pollster calls and asks for your opinion on guns, and/or inquires if you have any, a common response is to hang up without answering the questions, due to the possibility that the information will be used against them.
The result? They call someone else, and don't count "declined to answer" in their results. So the poll simply is the prevailing opinion of those who wished to answer, and thus is skewed one direction. (BTW, this is why everyone says there are "at least XXX hundred million guns in America; the best they can get is a low estimate)
This happens quite a lot with controversial topics.
Someone shouting “free Palestine” at random Jews in Europe, for example, is just being an antisemite.
re the second response: Original commenter did not specify exlusivity to jews. So that's my assumption.
You may genuinely believe that it’s wrong to blow up planes, but going up to a random Muslim in the airport and telling them “please don’t blow yourself up” is Islamophobic.
Do you agree with that?
You're not telling them to not attack Palestine by shouting "Free Palestine", or anything similar, only that you believe that Palestine should be free, so your comparison is not valid, because it does not contain any hidden assumptions.
They might as well agree with you. They can correctly respond by shouting Free Palestine back at you.
You can change the example to one that “expresses opinion” and it would still be just as offensive. Besides, “Free Palestine” is imperative.
I’ll just leave with some facts:
The lived experience of Jews outside of Israel is that this is being shouted at them specifically in response to them being recognized as Jewish, often with hate in the eyes of the shouters, often by people who don’t give a shit about Palestinians but just love to hate Jews.
It’s being shouted at little girls on the way to school, and spray painted on synagogues and Jewish shops.
It does nothing to help Palestinians. It just makes Jews feel less safe outside of Israel.
You can google about the synagogues and find many examples that have been reported.
Someone being yelled at is not going to make the news, but you can find on TikTok people filming themselves going to Jewish areas and looking for Jews to shout “Free Palestine” at.
And yes, some Jews feel they have to use throwaway accounts to hide their identity. That’s not something you should be proud of.
Edit: Here’s an example I found with a 2 minute google search. An Orthodox Jew is going about his day and a gang of youths chant “Free Palestine” at him.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOvplphE8HU/
There are many more if you’re actually interested.
Directing the expression of that opinion at random Jewish people, in a targeted manner is hate.
It’s the same as running up to a Muslim and screaming “stop terrorism”. Or running up to a black person and yelling “stop gang violence”.
The action of yelling at a random person because they belong to an ethnic group that is the dominant party that is doing a bad thing in a different part of the world means you are inherently judging them for their race/ethnicity. It is a pretty good definition of racism.
If you are yelling free Palestine at everyone, fine. If you are targeting your message at people because of their race, that’s just racism. The targeting is the issue, not the message.
Saying you weren’t directly involved is only an excuse up to a point.
Why aren’t we anti-war Jews the “Jewish community”? Lumping us all together as “unconditional” supporters of Israel and any supporter of Zionism as a supporter of the apartheid state is exactly the problem. It is definitionally racism to say that my behavior or viewpoint is a function of my heritage. So please stop.
What exactly am I supposed to do? Of course I’m not involved. I’ve never been to Israel. I don’t support their war aims. I don’t associate with any Jews or Jewish organizations who really do. Your last sentence is akin to saying that random Muslims can only claim not to be responsible for 9/11 up to a point. It’s reductive, stupid and racist.
Depending on where the plane was, it might not even have happened in the US.
And the answer is that the FBI wasn't involved. That was a threat the pilot made, which comes psychologically from the same place as terrorist bomb threats (and also "eat your vegetables or you'll die early" parenting). You want to control someone's behavior so you threaten maximalist retaliation.
Granted though, the FBI didn’t actually get involved. But why let facts get in the way of rage?
Sounds like they should only be made in freedom designated zones a-la Bush-Cheney
Greenland isn’t out the danger zone yet.
I can’t see that it ever has. Making it fractionally less ridiculous.
"Those attending should be aware that showing support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and we will not hesitate to act where the law is broken," said commander Claire Smart, who is leading policing operations in London this weekend.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings_an...
So yes, the FBI will get involved in this case. In this context it is something to worry about.
That says:
"Airplane hijackings have occurred since the early days of flight. ...Pre-1929, 1929–1957, 1958–1979, 1980–2000, and 2001–present."
"...Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide..According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful....
"..In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days.."
And your conclusion is "Palestinian" movement (that you wrote between quotes)...invented airplane hijacking?
Looks like the first one was a Hungarian in 1919.
Would you really be worried if someone said or wrote that near you in any context?
Short of them holding a weapon, this is baffling.
HN is generally absolutist when it comes to ‘freedom of speech’, and I don’t agree with having no limits, but in this instance it’s some overly sensitive overreaching BS.
Israelis, particularly Israeli jews for some reason, are very hateful. (half of them advocate killing every inhabitant of a conquered city https://archive.ph/nNzq4 - and they absolutely destroyed entire 100k+ strong cities in the last few years and killed everyone who refused to flee, so it's not an idle threat) They bombed many cafes and restaurants in the last few years, full of people.
On average they seem like complete violent nutjobs. Like every second Israeli you'll meet is likely to be one of those that if they decide they want your city, they'd just advocate killing you and your entire family if you resist. Yet they can still fly freely in the world?! People are too tolerant if anything. :)
For example, 3/4 Gazans were in support of killing and raping Israeli Jews (and Arabs) on Oct 7:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palesti...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/world/middleeast/settler-...
It baffles me. A rich, powerful democracy should be held to a higher standard. But… yes, both sides have been terrible.
Which side is going to work towards a peaceful coexistence?
To be clear, it was God that decided to give this land to Abraham in "everlasting possession," so this is pretty cut and dried. Why would Abraham lie about that?? /s
That is just nutty. Are we now actively participating in the genocide?
I consider posts like this larp/ragebait by default unless there's any actual evidence of that happening (like the flight being aborted in this case).
Don't these sites realize how many users they're losing?
No popups when using uBlock Origin and/or uMatrix
scheme=https://
host=simpleflying.com
ip=34.233.113.241
path=/united-airlines-767-returns-newark-bluetooth-name-alert/
{
echo url=$scheme$host$path
echo output=/dev/stdout
} \
|curl --resolve $host:443:$ip -K/dev/stdin \
|sed 's/<img src=[^>]*>//;/user-comment/,$d' \
|grep -o "<p>.*</p>" > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
#links -dump 1.htm
It requires an "adblocker" to stop its default behaviour
Alternatively, one needs to disable Javascript, restrict the browser's access to DNS, etc.
When an advertising company releases a "browser" that intentionally allows website operators to cram pages fuil of advertising and tracking is that a coincidence
Is that the only way a browser can be designed
No
How many users realise this
A small number
For example, I'm using a browser that cannot automatically request resources, run Javascript, CSS, etc. where HTTP headers, including cookies, are trivial for the user to create, edit, save and delete. I do not need an "adblocker"
"Don't these sites realise how many users they're losing?"
The number is so small why would they care
OK maybe the bomb blows up when it crosses some longitude, because this is like the movie Speed, and turning around means the plane never cross that longitude..
If you mean another type of duress, naming your device "plshelp-[seat number]" would be a hell lot more effective..
It’s funnier than that. If they had turned off the ‘bomb’ the plane would have just carried on.
The event is bizarre.
Wtf?
I can understand a bomb, but this is just free speech.
Also, now anyone who wants to disrupt a flight can switch their WiFi or Bluetooth name to Bomb or “Free Palestine” and the flight gets disrupted? Get out of here.
Just call the police and say you have a bomb planted on flight XYZ and want 100000$ or you'll detonate it.
"Bluetooth speaker name had been set to a "four-letter word, [...] BOMB".
Luckily, it wasn't named "Nuclear Bomb from Cuba" because US Authorities would not have other choice than to nuke Cuba.
Seriously? What those people are doing when they see a fence with "ASS" painted on it? Do they believe that too?
These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
What do you mean?