Show HN: Wey – A fast, open-source Slack desktop app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yue/wey <comment><USER2> Interesting to see this is from zcbenz, who was the initial creator of Electron. Slack's desktop app, which is based on Electron, is often criticized for its memory and CPU usage, so I'm wondering if the creation of Wey and its underlying Yue library are an answer/atonement for that.

<comment><USER3> On the github page, he writes this:

> Normally for multiple teams with heavy traffics, Wey should not have any > significant CPU usage, and RAM ussage is usually under 100MB. However if you > have a team with more than 10k users in it, the memory usage may increase a > lot.

Bloaty technologies was what made MS great in the 80's/90's, because 18 months later, the speed of the CPU would double.

I feel like we should think hard about optimizing for memory/cpu again.

<comment><USER4> Now that Moore's Law is dead, that time is coming. We can't afford to be wasteful. Not that we ever should have, but we've spent over a decade now catering to "developer productivity", now it's time to put the user role back in the forefront.

<comment><USER5> The last time I checked (roughly a year ago) Moore's law was still holding.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why the downvotes. Moores law[1] refers to the number of transistors that are on the die. With the decreasing size of the transistors, this has remained true. Despite that, clock speeds have stopped growing thereby leading to serial performance not increasing as fast as it had in the past.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law)

<comment><USER7> GPUs were stuck on 28nm for over 5 years before 16nm one launched. Intel has been stuck on 14nm for three and a half years and counting. This has certainly not been anything close to doubling every 18 months.

<comment><USER8> To repeat: Moore's law is about transistor count, not size. From the Wikipedia article linked in the comment above yours: "Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years."

Transistors can stay the exact same size for twenty years as long as the die size grows, and Moore's law still holds.

<comment><USER7> But the die size _didn 't_ grow at nearly that rate, large dies remain very expensive to make. For example, comparing the HD7970 and RX 390X, similarly positioned GPUs released 4 years apart in 2011 and 2015, transistor count grew ~50% from 4.3 billion to 6.2 billion.

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon- hd-7970-revie...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon- hd-7970-review)

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/9387/amd- radeon-300-series/3](https://www.anandtech.com/show/9387/amd- radeon-300-series/3)

<comment><USER8> > _But the die size didn 't grow at nearly that rate, large dies remain very > expensive to make._

But again, did transistors double in count on any processor, not just GPUs? If so, Moore held. Yes, according to this chart:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File%3AMo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File%3AMoore's_Law_Transistor_Count_1971-2016.png)

<comment><USER7> I mean if you want to go with the highest transistor count chip currently in existence, that would obviously be the 512Gb flash chips with ~170 billion transistors. Or if you want to constrain it to 'processors' that would be the 30 billion transistor Altera FPGAs. Which have been available for 3 years. No CPU yet has exceeded the 10 billion transistor count of the Sparc M7, also released 3 years ago. The Tesla P100, two years old, retains the highest GPU transistor count at 15 billion.

It's meaningless to compare these totally different types of chips that end up with extremely different transistor densities on the same node due to the wiring requirements.

<comment><USER8> I'm just the messenger. Apparently there is some sort of criteria for what a "dense integrated circuit" is for the chart previously pasted, and apparently all of the listed processors passed the required criteria for charting the law through time. What that criteria is, I couldn't tell you. Couldn't find it on the Wikipedia page. "Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years." (Wikipedia)

<comment><USER7> Yes. I read the wikipedia quote the first time you posted it. No need to say the exact same thing 5 times. The chart is clearly restricted to CPUs and ends in 2016. It's 2018 and the top chip on that chart still has the highest transistor count of any CPU on the market. Absolutely zero increase in transistor count for the type of chip that would go on that chart. Every category is seeing the exact same stagnation, Moore's law has been nowhere close to being matched in the past few years. Every chipmaker is struggling with their new nodes and falling way behind schedule on improvements. High- volume chips that normal people buy are really a far more realistic and useful barometer for Moore's law, and again you see the stagnation. Skylake and Kaby Lake are near-identical chips. Coffee Lake is ~25% bigger. There is no doubling of transistor counts going on in anything resembling an 18 month time frame.

<comment><USER8> Okay, so the comment is then that you believe Moore's law no longer holds because for the past two years transistor counts on CPUs have not increased. On that basis, I might agree. Not (as you were stating earlier) about the sizes of the transistors themselves, or about GPUs from 2011 to 2015, or about 512Gb flash chips. None of that applied to this conversation, hence the desire to repeat myself. Thank you for finally clearing that up. Now that we're finally on the same page, I might agree.

Are there no CPUs with higher transistor counts out there? Maybe ones you are not aware of yet?

<comment><USER7> Please show me this CPU with a higher transistor count. There is a maximum die size that each fab is able to make, mostly related to the optics used for their photolithography process. Most designs are nowhere near the limit because larger sizes are uneconomical to produce, though NVIDIA for example is on the record stating that TSMC is physically incapable of producing anything larger than their current GPUs.

<comment><USER8> > _Please show me this CPU with a higher transistor count._

That was my question to you. You claimed, "It's 2018 and the top chip on that chart still has the highest transistor count of any CPU on the market." Which I take to mean that you don't know of any CPU with any higher transistor counts, which is an argument from silence. There could be a CPU outside of your knowledge.

So, we wait to see. Moore may be dead but "moore" time may be needed to hold the funeral.

<comment><USER5> I agree with both of you that transistor count per mm² is stagnating in the last years. However that has happened before. For example, 1982-1987 and 2007-2010 according to Wikipedia data.

It is too early to declare Moore's Law dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice! However, looking at the screenshots... I wonder why developers so often seem to get UI paddings, margins and font sizes so wrong. Does it really need some special kind of sensitivity to notice and care about it? :)

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately a lot of developers value aesthetic and polish somewhere deep down on the list of priorities and don't seem to comprehend that other people care a lot about such things.

<comment><USER11> And a lot of developers just don't have an eye for it at all. I can look at a UI all day and tell that something is off but I couldn't even begin to tell you what or how to fix it. It doesn't mean I don't care.

<comment><USER12> It's not just having an eye for it; UI design is an entire field, and human computer interaction (HCI) has existed since the 70s. I think that a large part of the problem is PMs / managers / tech leads not understanding that design has subjective elements but can also be objectively good or bad, and that they can't tell the difference between a design that is correct and works well but might not look very flashy vs something that gets lots of likes on Dribble but is awful to use. This feeds into itself and leads to more people thinking that they know what good design is (pretty) and hiring other people who call themselves designers who have no idea about the actual science behind it.

<comment><USER13> As a developer who appreciates good design but doesn't really know how to create it, can you suggest a good entry level resource that summarizes what we've learned over the last 50 years about HCI and how to make usable interfaces?

<comment><USER14> Don't Make Me Think be Steve Krugg,Grid systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller Brockman, Designing with Grids by Mark Boulton, Any of Ellen Lupton's Type Design books. All light reads except Josef's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> First time I'm seeing Yue [0]. Seems like C++ w/ some Lua and JS bindings. Are there C bindings available so it can be used in other ecosystems without writing C++ glue? Writing a lib in C++ is rough for sharing across ecosystems and I'd say is a reason Qt and wxWidgets aren't more widespread than they already are.

0 - [https://github.com/yue/yue](https://github.com/yue/yue)

<comment><USER16> Yue sounds similar to libui[0], which has numerous language bindings, but seems to be in long term flux in terms of scope.

[0]: [https://github.com/andlabs/libui](https://github.com/andlabs/libui)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome! ...also kinda depressing that it's neccessary.

Hey Slack! How about an app for your service that doesn't grind my macbook pro to a halt?

<comment><USER18> Disable emojis. Seriously, the animated emojis must be implemented with something like this

        while(true) {
            foreach(emoji) {
                emoji.refresh();
                if (emoji.since_last_frame() > 1/60) emoji.next_frame();
            }
        }

Slack can easily eat up one core with just a few of them on the screen. Never seen that.

<comment><USER19> IIRC, the last update on OSX specifically mentioned that they were requesting the emojis way too often, and that it's now just doing it once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is this better than the official web client and why would I use it? It's not really "native", either.

<comment><USER21> I would guess it uses less memory: it claims generally <100MB, although in my opinion that's still a ridiculous amount of memory for a desktop IM client to use. Still, it's better than 800MB.

<comment><USER20> A bit off topic but yes, these days "native" apps tend to be memory hogs. Modern computers have tons of CPU and memory which makes the developers lazy, it would seem. Generally, noone optimizes their desktop clients.

<comment><USER22> Telegram is amazingly smooth on Linux and Windows.

<comment><USER23> Because it has a real native backend. It uses Qt/C++. I really wish other chat apps would do it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems really fast and snappy when I tried it, but already ran into multiple bugs within minutes of using it that makes it not usable for me. (Not meant as a harsh criticism, but just understand that it's early software, and I hope for it to improve and get good enough for daily uses.)

1\. The always-visible scroll bars (both horizontal and vertical) on the text box makes it not possible to see what I am typing (the scrollbars cover it and the text field is not large enough to show both scrollbars and the text) -- this is on the Mac client. The same scrollbar issue exists on the channel list on the side as well, but at least it's not blocking anything.

2\. When I sent a URL, the message immediately disappeared because Slack tried to generate the link preview, and apparently it's not supported yet in this client, so the whole message is just not shown.

<comment><USER25> I absolutely hate websites and apps that hide scroll bars. I always turn that feature off in OSX.

<comment><USER24> I share that sentiment about web sites. But this is what I am talking about: [https://imgur.com/DMOtSaO](https://imgur.com/DMOtSaO)

That input text field is where I am supposed to type my message. I can't see what I am typing. I can't resize it either. Doesn't that make it unusable instantly?

<comment><USER25> Ok fair enough that's pretty bad design flaw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty cool. From just reading the repo, it's built on this library I'd never heard of before called Yue[0] that seems to be similar to electron, but more lightweight.

[0]: [https://github.com/yue/yue](https://github.com/yue/yue)

<comment><USER7> It's not similar to Electron at all. Zero web technologies involved in it, other than supporting JS bindings. Far more like Qt/GTK except trying to use native widgets as much as possible. The Linux support actually _is_ GTK, but MacOS/Windows use the vendor UI libraries.

<comment><USER27> What's the bit about using electron in the JS bindings docs?

[http://libyue.com/docs/v0.4.0/js/guides/getting_started.html](http://libyue.com/docs/v0.4.0/js/guides/getting_started.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I kind of understand the need, but I would be more prone to actually use it if it was actually fully native. Now, I can simply just wait for Slack to update their client.

I don't really get why I should use this instead of slack unless I run really shitty hardware, which I don't. I had issued with Slack before, but they fixed most of them.

Also new features in slack will börk this app pretty quickly, as they have to be implemented for one to use them.

Cool project though, even if I personally don't get the value of it. Maybe if they added Gitter, Rocketchat etc support so you would have one client to rule them all.

</comment><comment><USER29> How does this compare to Franz? [https://github.com/meetfranz/franz](https://github.com/meetfranz/franz)

<comment><USER30> Franz launches a completely new instance for every workspace/network that you add and these are based on their regular webviews. Unlike Slack, it will not unload less frequently used workspaces from your RAM and with 8 Slack workspaces, Telegram, Whatsapp and IRCCloud it managed to permanently allocate more than 3 GiB RAM. That may be fine on my beefy desktop PC but not on my MacBook Air with only 8 GiB RAM.

In my case, just leaving the official apps of these chat networks in the background seems to be less resource intensive than running Franz. I really hope that [https://eul.im/](https://eul.im/) will up to my expectations.

<comment><USER31> I'm still really leery of eul.im, I can't seem to find anybody reviewing/actually using it and it throws up a couple detections on VirusTotal. Would be interested to hear of your experience.

<comment><USER32> Hi, developer here. I just tested it on VirusTotal and didn't get any detections. Could you please post a screenshot with what you get here or contact me via firstname.lastname@example.com?

Thanks

<comment><USER31> VirusTotal link: [https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/e88753917d7283715f0a4c633e...](https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/e88753917d7283715f0a4c633ea9f6740b38dd0fed3419a3ee03bcc84357185b/detection)

Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/X60nnAT.png](https://i.imgur.com/X60nnAT.png)

I'm excited to try it but because I'd be using it for sensitve/confidential work I don't want to risk it unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I installed it, it seemed a lot more "performant" than Slack's app on OS X. The Wey app crashed within 5 minutes though. :(

I noted that Wey only gives links to pictures with no previews. The linking out is fine but I think inline previews would be a nice addition down the road.

</comment><comment><USER34> The beta version of the slack app for macOS seem to be better [https://slack.com/beta/osx](https://slack.com/beta/osx) I can run it all day without problems. The non-beta one, consumed too much RAM.

</comment><comment><USER35> Another client built specifically for Linux: [https://github.com/raelgc/scudcloud](https://github.com/raelgc/scudcloud)

</comment><comment><USER36> Just to play devil's advocate, I still hope that Slack and other Electron apps put pressure on things like DOM libraries to improve their internal representations. The issue here is that a table or manually nested divs store everything at once rather than memoizing.

I personally don't believe that RecyclerView/TableLayout/GridLayout and UITableView/UICollectionView are the future because they are not declarative. The more code we have to juggle, the more it opens us up to bugs and pathological edge cases.

What we need is something similar to [https://github.com/splinesoft/SSDataSources](https://github.com/splinesoft/SSDataSources) that abstracts away the micromanagement inherent to view recycling. It would likely need to be tied into an evented data source like Firebase for JSON or maybe Redux or the immutable data store that Clojure uses. Then that metaphor could be adapted to the DOM and Electron's speed/memory overhead would be reduced substantially.

TL;DR Wey will likely succeed because it optimizes the table loading either with a faster runtime or by implementing the view recycling manually. This is not a long-term solution, unfortunately. But I applaud its efforts.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd love it if someone made a slack desktop app using actually native code instead of javascript. I'd pay you money. Please, someone make this so I can pay you money.

<comment><USER38> Did you try Wey? Is it fast like the author claims? Is Javascript vs Native Code really the problem or is it Slack's bloated Electron usage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> * If all Electron/Yue apps's performance are like this, I'm fine with Electron/Yue.

* The app is still quite buggy but showing a lots of potential.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is there any possibility of getting a signed macOS package for this? I can't install anything on my work machine that's unidentified.

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems does not support Azure SSO login for Slack? Advises password incorrect. Made me a bit nervous actually TBH.

<comment><USER42> Did you file a bug report?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> interesting bit: the creator of Yue is working at GitHub but Atom's xray is already started so there's no way to see this get adopted by Atom right?

<comment><USER43> Perhaps the author of Yue has different opinions than the team working on Xray?

It seems that there's duplicated effort among projects like xray, yue, libui- node/proton-native. Still, I'm glad to see people trying to solve this problem area of cross-platform apps, taking the Electron paradigm to the next level of efficiency.

[https://github.com/atom/xray](https://github.com/atom/xray)

[https://github.com/yue/yue](https://github.com/yue/yue)

[https://github.com/parro-it/libui-node](https://github.com/parro-it/libui- node)

[https://github.com/kusti8/proton-native](https://github.com/kusti8/proton- native)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > While Wey currently only supports Slack, it is on roadmap to add support for > more services, and in future we will support plugins to add arbitrary > services.

This is actually a Slack client, then?

</comment><comment><USER45> Ay, wey; qué chido

</comment><comment><USER18> It's insane that 100MB of ram for a "chat" client is seen as a good result. How did we get there? Is it really that much cheaper to develop desktop apps as slow and bloated web applications?

<comment><USER46> Most people don't seem to grasp that in this day and age, any GUI program (at least on OS X) is going to be minimum 20MB due to the retina display. Add in that realistically you need to use Webkit (or some HTML renderer), at which point... 100MB is pretty good.

For reference, an RSS reader I threw together using standard Cocoa widgets will hit 50-60MB with no issues, and that's with my being annoyingly judicious with how it's built.

<comment><USER47> > Add in that realistically you need to use Webkit (or some HTML renderer), at > which point... 100MB is pretty good.

Why do you need an HTML renderer? Slack uses Markdown.

emacs-slack is pretty lightweight …

<comment><USER46> Slack uses Markdown, yes, but supporting everything under the sun that Slack does (especially as they add new things) is just much easier inside a Webview.

The job of programming isn't to reinvent the wheel everywhere, it's just to deliver a product that doesn't suck - with native code, you're implementing a native solution for each feature Slack has or adds. Slack's content is web content.

You're really arguing that an insane amount of extra engineering time should be spent to conserve, at best, an extra 40-50MB of RAM... and this is disregarding how modern RAM works anyway.

<comment><USER48> > Slack's content is web content.

That's the underlying issue. If the "protocol" uses HTML, all clients will need to embed a web view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Something something 'do you know da wey :DD'

</comment><comment><USER50> I was reading slack as in Slack in Slackware. Then I opened the link, now I'm disappointed.</comment>


Gish Gallop - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop <comment><USER2> If people keep submitting (edit: I should really say upvoting) wikipedia.org articles on widely popular topics, we're going to have to penalize Wikipedia submissions again. We used to do that, but I was persuaded to remove the penalty. This case is particularly bad because the topic has long been an internet cliché, and also because it has a meta aspect. Meta is internet forum crack, so we try not to do it here—er, not too much. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114661) is another current thread where the topic is much too well-known to make a good Wikipedia submission.

Good HN submissions from Wikipedia are about topics that have not been widely discussed before, and about which there isn't a good article available elsewhere. (If there is, it's best to submit the latter instead.) Since Wikipedia is the most generic of sources, short of maybe a dictionary, it should be the domain of last resort for a topic.

I appreciate that not everyone has seen the same things. You can always use search as a proxy for how well known something is: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=gish%20gallop&sort=byDate&type=comment).

This has been coming up repeatedly recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089041)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed that moving the goalposts is extremely prevalent on HN, which makes for pretty frustrating conversations (or just reading). And then sometimes it's a tag team. E.g.:

Person A writes their comment. Person B1 offers a rebuttal. Personal A offers their response. Person B2 offers a second rebuttal that abandons the premise behind B1's rebuttal, and may actually be at odds with it. Person A ends up either deflated or looking defeated.

It's like the cross product of a Gish gallop and a DDoS.

<comment><USER4> It's a long tradition!

[https://smbx.org/bsg-guide-for-sending-email/](https://smbx.org/bsg-guide- for-sending-email/)

Proposed Symbolics guidelines for mail messages

BSG 4/11/84

[...]

It is customary to attack the someone by including his or her message, indented (unless you are using MM), and replying point by point, as someone debating someone they are watching on TV, or hearing on the radio.

It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one swift blow. The choice of lines to support your argument can make or break your case.

Replying to one's own message is a rarely-exposed technique for switching positions once you have thought about something only after sending mail.

[...]

You get 3 opportunities to advertise your Rock band, no more.

Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody.

[...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A particularly ridiculous version of this is "spreading" in debate, where you speak extremely fast so that your opponent has difficulty addressing all your points.

Wired video with some interviews: [https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0](https://youtu.be/0FPsEwWT6K0)

And a transcribed video from a highly-prepped debate: [https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc](https://youtu.be/JhzwSlK4uEc)

<comment><USER6> To be fair, I remember this being a problem even when I participated in middle school debate ~20 years ago.

If you make a bunch of points that the other team doesn't refute directly, you get to nail them on it later.

Short of you speaking so quickly that even the judge didn't understand you, it was heavily encouraged to speak extremely quickly even back then.

<comment><USER7> Stuff like this is why I don't put any weight into whoever "wins" a debate. There is skill involved but in debating but it's not about who had the facts on their side.

<comment><USER8> It's just a game, right? Would be like concluding which country is more powerful, UK or Croatia, based off a football game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do you deal with this strategy? A lot of hyper partisans and conspiracy theorists hammer you with a ton of "facts" that sometimes are correct but most of the times with half truths, misinterpretations and a pinch of things that are plain wrong. If you are lucky you can refute immediately but often it takes a lot of time and effort to research the topic. In a debate or discussion with friends I often feel stupid saying things like "I don't believe the stuff you are saying but I need to research things for a while before I can tell you what exactly is wrong." .

The current pandemic is a good example. The "Plandemic" movie is making its rounds in the neighborhood but all I can say is that I can't imagine that thousands of researchers around the world are part of a conspiracy. It just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER9> _> How do you deal with this strategy?_

By not debating with people who use it.

The hard question is how you prevent people who use this strategy from having influence over the opinions of others. We haven't solved that problem.

<comment><USER7> "By not debating with people who use it."

That's what I usually do. But it's sad to see well intentioned people seduced by nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The online version of this is a whole bunch of 'sources' in a comment. In fact, I suspect that there is a number of sources in an online comment where the truth goes up in sources and then drops.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes I've seen a "source" given that didn't actually support the claimed point. I think I've only seen that with a single source, though, not multiple sources. But when asked for a source, they just dropped a comment containing a URL that was superficially related, and someone had to take the time to actually _read_ the link to find out that it didn't actually support the disputed point.

In fact, the whole "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on" idea might be considered a variant of this. Making fine- sounding claims is easy; proving that they are false is harder. If you make claims faster than they can be refuted, you can get at least some people to believe you, even if much of what you say is false.</comment></comment>


Security or theater: no electronics on international flights? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/26/airplane-electronics-ban/

<comment><USER2> I flew yesterday and had an interesting encounter. I accidentally had a small set of lockpicks in my jacket pocket. I'm always VERY careful to completely empty my bag after I accidentally brought a knife into the security area once a few years ago in my camera bag (which they found of course, but didn't give me much trouble about. I always keep one in my camera bag for cutting tape, wires, tree branches in photo shoots, opening packages, etc)- however I didn't check my coat this time as I was rushed. Opps.

Anyway, I took lockpicks through. Of course they noticed them in the x-ray machine. The guy was super nice about it. He was like, "What are these?" and I responded, "Lockpicks. I just have them for practice on stuff and learning, I didn't mean to travel with them. I'm sorry if they are something that is contraband from carrying on airplanes and I totally understand if you have to keep them."

The guy looked a little puzzled. "Like you use to start or open a car?". Now honestly I've never tried picking a car. I've tried picking my motorcycle when the key fell out once, but never a car. I say, "I guess you could, but I've never tried it." I was worried that he thought I was a car thief or something. He then said, "Oh, well I've been having this trouble with my car ignition. Its really lose. I've always carried heavy keys and I think its broken. Do you know anything about fixing it?" He was intrigued and just was curious. Not accusatory at all. I was kinda shocked. He looked at them and said, "They don't look sharp or anything. They should be fine. We let people carry through small scissors which are more dangerous than these because if you break them in two they are two small knives if they are sharp"

He scanned them through the x-ray once more, and handed them to me and was asking a few other questions about good locksmiths in the area to fix his car. I apologized again for the trouble, but he said and this is the important part:

"Look, I used to work for a prison. The security here is a joke compared to real security at prisons. These wouldn't get through there, but we let all sorts of stuff through that would probably get someone killed in prison fights or would be instantly contraband there."

I'd thought about this before, but the bluntness and understanding that he had behind this was a real shock to me. I'd never thought that the airports were secure- but compare them to an actual 'secure' environment like a prison and they seem wide open.

It is truly unfortunate that the higher ups at the TSA don't promote this guy to the top and have the same understanding as him. You're not making a secure place with these practices- you're making placebo.

If we wanted real security EVERYONE would probably need cavity searches and no one could take anything at all onboard. I'm glad we aren't trying for that obviously.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you had a good, reasonable experience. On Wednesday, I was told by a TSO that I couldn't bring my baby on board. She was making a joke, because she wanted to assert that the baby was cute, but telling someone they can't bring their baby on a plane _at the security checkpoint_ is about as serious a joke to parents as joking about carrying a bomb is to TSOs.

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, you apparently kept your cool. I imagine if your reaction was anywhere near how you really felt about it you'd be detained and tasered for awhile.

<comment><USER2> I'll admit I was nervous. I normally pass through completely unnervous- but as soon as they went to rescan my jacket, I knew what was in the pocket. I know in some states simply carrying lockpicks is illegal (probably MA too for all I know, but I do it anyway), let alone taking them on a plane. I was thinking, "shit, shit, shit, shit" but knew that if I played as sincere, naive and innocent (which to a degree I was all three) then I'd be fine.

I do know however, just as in any situation with any law enforcement (or quasi law enforcement) that you do not lie to them. You talk around the truth like an Aes Sedai if you must, but don't lie. If you are pulled into a room for more questioning and you're forced to reveal that you lied, it will be much worse to get out of.

<comment><USER4> The best way not to lie to cops is not to say anything at all. If you lie they'll pin you on your lies, and if you tell the truth they'll crucify you with that, too. Thankfully you have a constitutional right to remain silent.

Personally, I only do that when it seems like serious business. When I'm pulled over for speeding there's no gain playing mute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Security whack-a-mole.

Box cutters used in 9/11... ban anything sharp

Shoe bomber... make people take off shoes

Liquid explosive plot... limit liquids and gels to 4oz containers

Guy tries to explode bomb in his lap during the last hour of a flight... no things in your lap during the last hour.

It's comical and tragic.

<comment><USER6> _Note: I do research in explosives detection_

With the exception of the last one, banning box cutters, requiring people to take off their shoes, and limiting explosives are actually quite reasonable for security. Current detection technologies can't really detect explosive substances, except for the X-ray machine, but the best it can do is tell you the density of the materials in question, not necessarily what type of explosive it is. So running your shoes through the machine makes sense, as enough dangerous solid explosive can be packed into the sole of a shoe.

Liquid explosives are extremely unstable. The explosive power is probably not enough to blow up a plane, but it can definitely injure or kill many people or set fire to the plane. Plus, no machine exists to distinguish explosive liquids from non-explosive liquids at the scale that an airport requires.

For the curious, I'll just briefly list some of the detection systems that are out on the market, and what their capabilities are:

\- Metal detector

\- X-ray machine - Densities of materials

\- Ion Mobility Scanner (eg. Puffers or Swipers) - Trace explosives detection, but easily confused by other nitro compounds such as hand cremes, fertilizer, and uh..jet fuel.

\- Millimeter Wave Scanner (eg. Whole Body Scanner) - Anomaly detection (eg. can penetrate clothing), but cannot identify explosives.

\- Terahertz Imaging - Can penetrate clothing and can identify materials, including explosives, but can be blocked by water and hasn't reached commercialization.

\- Other wavelength imaging - Our group uses UV light and can detect trace amounts of explosives, but does not penetrate clothing. It's only a surface technique.

<comment><USER7> "Current detection technologies can't really detect explosive substances ..."

There are plenty of direct explosives detectors, such as the ICx products: <http://www.icxt.com/products/icx-detection/explosives/>

<comment><USER6> Fido isn't for airport security. It's for small applications where you want to inspect explosive traces in particular situations. As far as I know it's single use, and you have to replace the polymeric/chemical sensor on each application.

<comment><USER7> Fido sensing elements are generally good for many hours of operation. The PaxPoint product is specifically intended for liquid screening in airports. The main limitation is that they need a focused target to work on. The holy grail is a walk-through chemical sensor, but the physics of that is challenging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish some of our politicians had the balls to stop this paranoid mess and say "No, we can't guarantee 100% safety, learn to live with it".

<comment><USER9> It's not politicians. It's people. And, it is people who are paranoid and irrational. Politicians just have to cater to the majority opinion to get anything done.

<comment><USER10> It'd be nice and refreshing if the media, and governments spent as much time as possible educating people on the comparative risks.

The chance of dying from terrorism is far far lower than most other causes of death. It's a rounding error.

The other one that gets me is the painting by the media that pedophiles are going to snatch your child off the street, whilst the risk is miniscule, and most sexual abuse is by family members. It makes people afraid to live their lives.

If newspapers actually ranked news by how much it actually matters, we'd have a massively different view of the world.

<comment><USER11> Media outlets would label that as "boring." It's a sad state of affairs, but sensationalism sells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If true this is insane. Why not just sedate everyone and handcuff them to the seats because the way things are going that is the logical conclusion to this inanity.

<comment><USER13> Ugh, I'd much prefer that to all the dehumanizing and paranoia that is present-day air travel. Knock me out and send me FedEx, please. Probably takes about as long to recover from a horse tranquilizer as it does from plain ol' jet lag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Businesses that fly people internationally will freak out, as many have said - although I would think that it would be because of people having to check their laptops, as opposed to their inability to be productive while flying.

When I used to fly for business with a laptop, the company assumed I wouldn't get much work done on the flight - but one of the cardinal rules was that your laptop was never out of your physical sight when traveling. We encrypted everything, but you always had to bring it carry-on, stash it under your seat, and carry it with you when you went to the washroom.

I'd also be pretty cheesed off if I was an airline - making all these investments in on-board Internet, and now having it banned.

As for the others, I think I could get used to them - I rarely use my iPod when flying anyways (stick with sleeping or in-seat TV), could pack my bag slightly better if needed to eliminate the "personal article" we're now allowed to carry on, and time my bathroom breaks better (the no-standing rule was in force flying into Reagan for a while post-9/11).

More broadly, however, it pisses me off on the grounds that it assumes everyone is a criminal, and would do almost nothing in terms of actual airline security.

<comment><USER15> "carry it with you when you went to the washroom."

You aren't suggesting you need to carry your laptop case with you into the _airplane_ washroom are you? Talking about security theater...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that if you correctly parse xenijardin's tweet (and her boingboing post here: [http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/26/yo-dawg-i-heard- you.htm...](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/26/yo-dawg-i-heard-you.html)), then it becomes clear that you're not allowed to use electronics during the last hour of a flight, not the entire flight. Let's play telephone...

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm hoping this is a temporary over-reaction, _or_ over-stated, _or_ both.

However, I've got a trip to the USA in mid-February (coincidentally flying in from Schiphol) that is probably going to be cancelled if this is (as the more extreme rumours have it) a permanent ban on in-flight use of electronics during all stages of flights to the US.

And I really don't think I'll be the only person cancelling discretionary visits.

Given that the numbskull suicide bomber in question apparently tried to inject some sort of accelerant into the powder in his trousers using a syringe, I pity any diabetics trying to fly anywhere in the next few weeks ...

</comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps the first nut with an implanted (say, abdominal cavity) bomb will save us from this.

<comment><USER19> After that, we'll have to send our entire bodies through the x-ray machine.

<comment><USER18> It isn't difficult to create explosives with the same x-ray transparency as body fat.

The detonator squib will be in a pen, a glasses frame, or some other everyday item which has not yet been forbidden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm also wondering if the TSA will allow airlines to start selling "clean" electronic devices for high prices- just like they did with water and other "fluids". No water through security- but you can buy it for a special price inside!

</comment><comment><USER20> Can't wait till someone tries to get explosives on the plane weaved into clothes.

<comment><USER21> According to the BBC report on this incident, we're there already...

Techchrunch seems to think it was 'electronics' related, but the BBC is reporting that he had explosives sewn into the elastic band of his underwear.

So if anything, TSA are likely to ban clothes on planes.

<comment><USER22> "Moulded around his body parts" (source: BBC One News at Ten). Start your sausage-sizzle jokes now, dudes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If this is a move from the TSA to counter attacks like the man who recently tried to set himself on fire on a plane the irony is that books burn much better than electronics.

<comment><USER24> Books burn much better than electronics; but they're far less explosive than laptop batteries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know if charters are exempt from TSA rules?

What about private jets?

I just wonder when it starts being profitable to start trying to find the TSA loopholes.

<comment><USER26> Charter flights fall under FAA Part 135 rules; scheduled flights are Part 121. With charter flights you don't have to put up with all of the passenger screening stuff. It's also surprisingly affordable if you are traveling with a group, e.g. a Gulfstream IV carries around 14 passengers and rents for about $6k/hour. A King Air 200 carries 6 or 7 about half as fast for around $1.5k/hour.

<comment><USER25> That's pretty interesting... Tony Hsieh made a funny joke about starting a "Zappos Airlines" at Startup School this year. Airlines are already notorious for terrible customer service, and if you add on all the ridiculousness of these new TSA rules (if true) then maybe there's some room for a little disruption. Of course, this assumes there are loopholes that can be taken advantage of.

I know I'll be flying a lot less if I can't use electronics internationally; and I'd certainly be willing to pay more money to make those flights if I could continue to use my gear when traveling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I doubt there's any validity to this claim, just another TC bad reporting most likely.

Banning electronics on flights would be the final nail in the coffin for air- travel, even just on international flights it would piss off so many corporate travellers that the airlines wouldn't cope with the losses - many large corps only accept 8hr+ flights for business trips because the employee(s) can work while in flight.

<comment><USER27> Its valid: <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/us/27security.html>. Which is actually linked to in the article.

<comment><USER28> That link says nothing about electronics, the headline claim. The sources for banning electronics all seem to refer to Twitter, which may result from isolated incidents, or speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You all realize that this just means the TSA reads XKCD?

<http://xkcd.org/651/>

<comment><USER29> Anyone reading the TSA blog already knows they do: [http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check- cartoo...](http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoon.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Prohibiting media players and computers turns selling on-board movies into a great way to make money.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cue the inevitable XKCD link: <http://xkcd.com/651/></comment>