Because I read too many comments here, by people super seriously invested in some teenager obeying some arbitrary rules far away, over vast swaths of water, both liquid and solid.
And it seriously irked me. I know rules are there for a reason. Some are even good and make cooperation between people easier. But when rare edge case happens I hate that the first instinct of random people is to ponder how the rules, established by wealthy and powerful, should be applied with maximum severity to inflict maximum damage on the stupid kid that wanted to stand out. And all this while established international rules regarding war crimes are violated daily. And the criminal suffers no punishment, barely any inconvenience and gets to have a meeting with US president in Alaska, who himself is also a criminal, just not of the war flavor, yet, probably.
Exactly. I have lost all ability to care when people complain about petty things like how outrageous it is to dare to land on a slab of ice and rock but at the same time not do anything about multiple active genocides. I just focus on my friends, family, and community and have lost all ability to care about these broader questions.
> how outrageous it is to dare to land on a slab of ice and rock
The particular “slab of ice and rock” that he landed on without permission after filing a false flight plan appears to be (while the story mentions only that it is a military base) a public airport operated by the Chilean air force, and the only airport on King George Island. (The name the article uses for the base is actually the name of the airport that is part of the base, the base has a different name.)
There's kind of a good reason for them to be touchy about people not following protocol with things like flight plans and landing permissions.
Don't call him a stupid kid. He represents everything I believe in as a hacker. He's smart, beautiful, talented, and wants to live life pulling off cool stunts that inspire the rest of us, with or without permission. Silly rules aren't meant for people like him. It's a travesty that a hacker forum would hate hackers so much and cheer on a scheming third world government stamping out his dream. A good, wise, enlightened government would try to cultivate this kind of curiosity and spunk, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to inflict pain and bleed someone for a small amount of money. When I grew up in America, the movies idolized people like him, and that's one of the reasons America has been so successful. I hope he isn't so traumatized by this unfair abuse that he never wants to be audacious again.
It really is a pathetic "hacker" move if the plan was "Let's just flaunt the rules, land in 'hostile' territory and hope the punishment isn't so severe.". So far his talent is operating a plane, lots of people can do that.
An actual hacker would figure out something clever to not be caught, be arrested/detained for several weeks (de facto if not de jure), and relying on daddy's dollars to bail him out...
"hacker" just means someone who creatively does new things in unexpected/unintended ways. Any good hacker has a mindset to disregard arbitrary rules -- especially rules like "that's not possible" or "it should always be done this way". That's the mindset it takes to find novel solutions to open problems with real depth. Justine Tunney (jart) is a canonical example of a hacker par excellence, along with characters such as Fabrice Bellard, Richard Stallman, Hector Martin, and Alyssa Rosenzweig.
Finding a way to land a plane on all 7 continents is a really cool problem, and while I get that lying to officials on a form crosses an ethical line, we should at least honor the mindset of wanting to achieve something amazing most people would balk at, and give grace given the circumstance. This person should not be treated like a felon.
Furthermore, aviation as a field has had far too much of a conformance culture, and as as result we haven't seen any real breakthroughs, especially in (non-ultralight) general aviation since the 1970s. Cessna made GA accessible to middle-class families in the 1960s (a basic Cessna ran roughly $65,000 in today's dollars) -- but is there even a vendor today that sells a decent GA "toyota corolla"-type plane that is affordable for middle-class families? A brand-new Cessna 172 costs roughly $500,000 today, and a used airworthy one from the 1960s will cost at least $75,000. This field, and American manufacturing in general, needs more hackers.
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Flaunting the rules was probably his only option for getting into Antarctica. I imagine for many hackers in the past, their best hope of getting to play with a serious computer was to hack into one. The motivation is what matters. If your goal is to do crime and profit, then yes, not getting caught is very important. But if your goal is curiosity or to tell a compelling story to your followers about how you did something no one's ever done before, then that comes from a pure innocent heart. Such a person is unlikely to have spent much time in their life developing the skills needed to not get caught. So I wouldn't hold that against them. It's on the system to forgive such persons. If what they did was actually cool and prosocial, then they shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules to do it.
And it seriously irked me. I know rules are there for a reason. Some are even good and make cooperation between people easier. But when rare edge case happens I hate that the first instinct of random people is to ponder how the rules, established by wealthy and powerful, should be applied with maximum severity to inflict maximum damage on the stupid kid that wanted to stand out. And all this while established international rules regarding war crimes are violated daily. And the criminal suffers no punishment, barely any inconvenience and gets to have a meeting with US president in Alaska, who himself is also a criminal, just not of the war flavor, yet, probably.
There was this guy a while back: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
Young people want to do daring things. Don't crucify them in your minds on behalf of powerful, rich, old farts when they try, if noone got hurt.