Interesting Links for 29-04-2024

[andrewducker]

1. American Airlines keeps mistaking 101-year-old passenger for baby

(tags:computers age )

2. Police use of forensics slashed as budgets cut

(tags:forensics police UK austerity )

3. The telemetry data from the Apollo missions may be very nearly beyond retrieval

(tags:archive moon space NASA history doom )

4. Law to ban politicians from lying backed by two-thirds of public - Wales is looking at this right now

(tags:lying politics law wales )

5. Transgender Athletes Could Be At A Physical Disadvantage, New Research Funded by the International Olympic Committee Finds

(tags:transgender sports olympics lgbt )

6. The Millennial CAPTCHA

(tags:age demographics funny history )

Comments

[cmcmck]

5. Quelle surprise

[dewline]

Indeed.

I am full of reactions today, apparently

[misbegotten]

1. I'm not sure why they don't just book her ticket putting her age as 99. I mean, if the data is going to be incorrect anyway...

2. Oh my word. How awful.

3. Another funding issue. Sigh.

Re: I am full of reactions today, apparently

[andrewducker]

1. You try taking a flight where your ticket details don't match your ID, and see how long it takes the people with the guns and permission to take you to Guantanamo to get excited.

Re: I am full of reactions today, apparently

[misbegotten]

Right, but clearly she's not 1 year old and she's getting through security with THAT.

Re: I am full of reactions today, apparently

[andrewducker]

Yeah, but the date of birth will at least match. Changing it by 2 years will definitely look more suspicious.

Re: I am full of reactions today, apparently

[foms]

I worry about this happening to me. The travel agency that my job requires also requires date of birth to have any account with them. Official response to my challenge that I must not provide that information (and they must not ask -- as was the set-up of the previous iteration of their system) until and unless I am in the act of purchasing a travel ticket for a destination outside of this country has, so far, been: lie.

I have not yet had to travel at all using this system but, if I do use air travel, again, they won't even make any statement about whether the information in the date of birth field may be transmitted to an airline for domestic destinations.

Once I give them the information, it's theirs, forever.

Also: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/06/__trashed-2.html

[wildeabandon]

I'd be quite concerned about 4 unless it were limited to lies that relate to their jobs or campaigns. Politicians have as much of a right to personal privacy as anyone else, and where a refusal to answer will lead to harmful speculation I think it's perfectly legitimate to lie in response to questions about things that are none of the public's damn business (I'm thinking about things like health or medical history, family life, sexuality, and so on, because those are the things I want the option of keeping private, but there are probably a whole bunch of other things I haven't thought of.)

[andrewducker]

I would tend to agree that it should be limited to things that wouldn't be private information.

[bens_dad]

I don't think that they should be allowed to lie about *anything* in a press conference or on the record in Parliament etc.

"Did you sleep with X ?" and "When did you sell your house ?" are personal questions but *sometimes* they are politically significant.

I am not suggesting that they have to *answer* these questions, so the press would have to accept that ... which would require a change in press culture.

Perhaps we are talking about a "White lie" defence ?

[kerk_hiraeth]

Good luck defining a lie...

kerk

[bens_dad]

3 I was surprised and annoyed to discover that political ads are not covered by the Advertising Standards Authority.

[andrewducker]

It's not good, is it?

[bens_dad]

I concluded that the ASA budget would need to be increased substantially to allow them to police political ads.

[andrewducker]

Oh yeah. If we want this country to be at all functional then all sorts of things need more funding!