I do find it interesting/funny that Google felt the need to actually provide this, as a sort of acknowledgement that their main search “results” page is so full of random info boxes and generated content that people can’t find actual links anymore.

Personally, and In principle at least, this makes sense. About half of my web searches are looking for a quick answer to a question (what’s the per pound cook time for a frozen turkey?), so having that answer highlighted and summarized alongside the source is very useful. It’s actually the minority of the time that what I really want is a link to an external resource.

The effectiveness of that implementation and the accuracy of the summarized info is a whole other topic…

I actually didn’t, which was the main reason I replied.

It’s fairly common to see people arguing as though a thing is either risky or not risky, without any sense of context.

Risks exist on a continuum, and something not literally being forcibly banned doesn’t mean there is zero risk in that thing, just that the risk is lower than those things that are forcibly banned or that the risks can be mitigated in other ways.

Same reason you go through a metal detector to check for weapons before getting within half mile of a plane, but were left pretty much on your honor to not bring a Samsung phone with a spicy battery on board.

That’s asinine. It’s like saying “If brakes really mattered, a cop would check your brakes before letting you drive to work in the morning”. Brakes are pretty damn important, but very few places (in the US at least) have any mechanism for ensuring yours are in working order even periodically.

Proper risk mitigation takes into account (at minimum) the likelihood of an event occuring, the severity of the event occurring, your willingness to tolerate a failure, and the cost associated with implementing corrections.

Airlines have an EXTREMELY low tolerance for any kind of risk that could conceivably lead to a catastrophic failure, so the fact that you’re allowed to have a device, despite potential safety concerns, comes from a combination of a few factors:

1. The chances of some kind of major interference with flight ops happening are demonstrably pretty low
2. People would likely push back quite hard on not being able to use electronic devices for entertainment on a flight.
3. Most people comply with the request.
4. Related to 3, there is little reason for airlines to change the rule, since cell operation is next to impossible in flight anyways, and wifi/bluetooth are not in the frequency range of concern.

The real issue is that airplane mode should really only affect cell signals now and leave WiFi alone since planes have WiFi now and a lot of applications share between devices with WiFi, and leave Bluetooth and NFC alone since they’re short range and low power and unlikely to cause issues.

I’m not sure how common it is, but my S22+ will remember if I turn bluetooth or wifi on while in airplane mode, and leave them on in the future. That’s especially nice since I use a CGM that pairs to my phone via bluetooth, so I don’t have to worry about accidentally losing that connection.

Spot on about there not being any point in having cellular service enabled. You’re 6 miles up and traveling a mile every few seconds, so you might as well just shut that radio off and save a bit of battery power.