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TProphet
@tprophet@defcon.social
mastodon 4.7.3- Founder of Queercon, TeleChallenge, AwardCat
- Writer at 2600, Tribe Of Hackers
- Leader of Secure Development at a F500.
Public profile is an experiment. Can the Internet keep nice things?
Every day, my life continues to amaze me.
我是同性恋# 🏳️🌈
Opinions are my own.
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50 Posts
Joined November 16, 2022
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Jimbo Meydenbauer Meowser The First is trying to hack his automatic feeder. He succeeded yesterday, but he doesn't know I have patched the vulnerability.
Some mysterious literature has showed up at @hopeconf@mastodon.online
So far, the White House has started a war with Venezuela, threatened to invade EU territory, and threatened the independence of the Federal Reserve in order to avoid releasing the Epstein files.
What's inside them must be really, really bad.
Look we can either have an optional pointless war or food safety inspections, there simply isn't room in the budget for both. https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/new-mexico-to-end-food-service-inspections-due-to-bureaus-funding-woes/article_d4befb4e-22d4-4f5f-a9c8-582e66f4bf94.html
They appear to have completely innocent intentions which definitely do not include theft and stealing.
I don't work for Meta, but I just got this text and apparently they are laying me off.
Replying to
15/ One last piece of airline trivia before I leave you all to digest this thread. American Airlines cancelled less than 1% of its schedule yesterday. Southwest cancelled over 70% of its schedule.
Southwest will likely (successfully) claim that under the Contract of Carriage, they do not have to pay for stranded passengers' hotels. Keep this in mind any time that politicians show up saying that every problem will be fixed with tort reform to keep evil class action lawyers from driving up costs.
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14/ You didn't get home for Christmas? You got stranded in Las Vegas for a week? Well, dear consumer, Southwest won't help you, the government won't help you, nobody will compensate you for the losses you suffer, and you also can't sue because the federal government has given airlines a liability shield along with endless taxpayer bailouts. If you don't like it, you're looking at one middle finger from the federal government, and another from Southwest.
We have a democracy so we can change our government peacefully, and that's what we should do. And then we should improve our democracy to make it permanent and indelible.
Other countries have to resort to violence, because there is no other way to change the government. Although the current government is doing its best to change us into Russia, that is not the US--yet.
TIL that 88 countries have suspended mail delivery to the US because of the Trump tariff craziness, which is still in effect because breaking international mail was one thing that stuck. So postcards to my family from Kyrgyzstan, country #77, couldn't be sent. This is a decades long tradition to me and my family, but just one more thing broken by the world's biggest asshole.
Murka, who played Murka of Area 51 National Park last year
Replying to
9/ However, they were just really mean to everyone who works for them. They also effectively required employees to come to work sick, making others sick just before they're most needed to recover the operation. Ben Schlappig wrote an article that covers the details here, so check it out: https://onemileatatime.com/news/southwest-airlines-meltdown-denver/
Meanwhile in Canada
Vancouver SSR
Replying to
13/ This holiday season could have worked out really well for Southwest. They did their route planning the same way that American companies do supply chain planning: "just in time" with no slack or contingency planning. If it all melts down, they dump the problem on their customers. Southwest, after all, legally has no responsibility to anyone except for their shareholders. They are covered by their Contract of Carriage and US Department of Transportation rules (which are lasseiz-faire at best).
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8/ Southwest now has a problem where they need to figure out where all their crews are, and their planes are, and basically redo their entire crew and aircraft scheduling plan for the whole airline. The only real way they have to do this, because of the way they operate, is to stop for an entire day and set to work inventorying their assets and crews and then build out entirely new trips for everyone.
McSpaghetti, obviously
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10/ Anyway, how does Southwest fix this? Just like in #infosec, every time there is a high profile problem, there is a vendor promising to magically fix everything with AI. Unfortunately, just like in #infosec, the problem space is very complicated and AI is not good at solving most of these problems.
A very Soviet day in Bishkek
It's always...
There is a Rubber Duck Museum in Tsawwassen because of course there is.
Replying to
7/ Yeah, about that. So when Southwest melted down, they didn't have nearly the number of rooms reserved that they needed for their own crew, and it was Christmas so hotels were full. Crews often did not get rooms. They just got dumped like passengers at airports. At least there are crew break rooms at most airports, but it's not very comfortable.
Major airlines usually have enough hotel relationships to be able to work something out (American has had some issues too) but Southwest does not.
Replying to
12/ Because Qantas plans ahead for emergencies, and they absorb the expense of doing so, they're able to recover their operation. And to be fair, it's not just Southwest who does their route planning this way. You see the same sort of problems with Flair Airlines in Canada. They're an extreme example but fairly representative. Flair serves 34 destinations with 24 aircraft. You can imagine the follow-on impact if any flight, on any leg, has a problem.
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6/ So, about aircraft positioning and crew scheduling - Southwest is essentially a short and medium haul airline. They mostly don't do long haul services except for Hawaii.
Southwest turns aircraft quickly, in less than 30 minutes. They have higher aircraft utilization than any other major US airline. They often run their crews on tight loops where they're out from home and back the same day so they can save money on accommodating crews who overnight away from their home base.
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5/ In this case, it's the week between Christmas and New Year, and there are no seats on other airlines to book their passengers into. Even if there were, there is no interline agreement. So Southwest basically says "see you next week" and dumps you wherever they left you.
Replying to
11/ One way they could handle it is already proven, it's just expensive: holding crews and aircraft in reserve to recover from irregular operations. Qantas successfully does this.
A week ago, Qantas had an A380 unexpectedly land in Azerbaijan.
They thought there might be a fire in the cargo bay so they landed in Baku. It turned out there was a real problem with the aircraft and it couldn't be promptly repaired in Azerbaijan, a country which doesn't frequently see A380s. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/24/qantas-sends-rescue-flight-to-azerbaijan-after-stranded-passengers-left-in-the-dark
There is no freedom of the press when it's controlled by the government.
"Every journalist at CBS News now knows that if you spend months working on a segment that makes the Trump administration look bad, it might get killed at the last second by someone who’s never worked in television news and who reports directly to a billionaire with business before the administration."
This just about sums up the current state of affairs in the United States of America. The rest of the world shouldn't treat this place like a normal country, because it isn't: https://newrepublic.com/article/204227/trump-immigration-nightmare-happening-here
Meanwhile in Canada
Replying to
P.S.: A reader pointed out that Southwest uses Amadeus. Well, they *sort of* use a highly customized implementation of Amadeus with limited functionality. Here's an example: flight schedules are loaded manually, in batches! You can see it right here: https://www.southwest.com/air/flight-schedules/
I think my column in this issue is one of the best I have ever written. I went into the field to research it. It's not online, you can only get it in the issue. Please consider subscribing.
Putting Internet trolls in charge of important things delivers objectively bad results. Exhibit A: Twitter. Exhibit B: The Republican Party.
Replying to
@mwt@mastodon.nz @clipperchip@ioc.exchange In a case like this, the best you can do is charge back with your credit card company. You'll likely get a refund, but you'll have to buy a replacement ticket from another airline at the then-current price, which is probably a lot more expensive than a fire sale fare from a near-bankrupt airline.
Is the physical security of the hotel where you're staying as good as you think it is? https://viewfromthewing.com/a-hotel-owner-tested-old-key-cards-at-marriott-hyatt-and-westin-why-they-still-opened-lounge-gym-and-elevators-months-later/
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@BAPearlmutter@fosstodon.org @dascandy42@mastodon.social This isn't unusual. Airlines that bring new service to airports can negotiate a revenue split for concessions.
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@Charlotte0810@cville.online I'll believe accountability when I see it. Until then, it is only words.
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@BAPearlmutter@fosstodon.org @dascandy42@mastodon.social Southwest has a similar operational model but an entirely different financial model. Ryanair and ULCCs make substantially all of their money on ancillaries. Southwest makes money with its Rapid Rewards frequent flier program and by selling fares.
Replying to
@headmold@mastodon.social Mayor Pete is very good at debating Fox News hosts but he seems like a very bad and ineffective Secretary of Transportation so far. He needs to decide whether he wants to do his job, or run for President.
Replying to
@dascandy42@mastodon.social I think that overall, they're good people trying to run a good airline. It's complicated. Southwest does some things really well. Other things, I don't think they do as well. I worry about the safety culture there--this isn't unwarranted, given repeated incidents. If their IT is this bad, I wonder what (if anything) they could also be missing in security. They need to decide that safe and reliable operations are important, and invest accordingly.
Replying to
@dascandy42@mastodon.social Nope, Southwest is very much not the American version of Ryanair. That would be Spirit. Southwest is its own thing. They bear some similarities to ultra low cost carriers (turning around aircraft fast, no interline agreements, serving secondary airports) but many differences (unlike other major US airlines, two checked bags are free on Southwest).
Replying to
@indri@masto.ai If I have to guess, the process will be to send a bunch of insurance company letters. You know, the ones that are really nice, talk in circles, and say they're "unable" to pay. Maybe include a $200 expiring airline voucher along with it (that's usually what Southwest does).
Being Southwest, though, they will capitalize things that ordinarily shouldn't be capitalized throughout the letter, in order to sound more like Hunter S. Thompson.
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@indri@masto.ai @headmold@mastodon.social Wasn't he a presidential candidate? Isn't he a regular talking head on TV discussing policy areas well outside of his role as Secretary of Transportation? If you don't think he has presidential ambitions, I have a bridge to sell you.
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@indri@masto.ai The customer service is a statement of intent, but actions speak louder than words and so far, they're apparently not giving hotel vouchers.
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@osyen@c.im @indri@masto.ai @headmold@mastodon.social So far he's mostly been talk and no action. Look, I like the guy, but objectively he has to deliver. This is his chance. We'll see what happens.