281–290 of 368 posts
I wrote this, not happy it got picked up and posted here without credit. Here's the original Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/adl0jk...
I wrote this, not happy it got picked up and posted here without credit. Here's the original Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/adl0jk...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
when you know all the quirks you won't when notice that you constantly work around them. Unfortunately, we programmers are particularly good at doing this. We are extremely good at being "nice" to software. ("Mechanical sympathy")
My child has bypassed the lock screen on my laptop and caused a gray-screen-of-death, just by banging on the keyboard. I saw it, I am unable to replicate it. Everything should be tested by a child before it can enter production service.
I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now I’m not sure if he meant that literally and there’s a number in the Boeing employee handbook, but he had a point. He said they could make planes cost twice as much and save a few lives th…
The NHTSA has a similar number, I believe its in the realm of $2 million per life. Its based off of medical costs and a few other "organic" numbers to estimate what the population as a whole values a life at. Its morbid but it has to be this way or transportation would be unaffordable.
[0] https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/economic-values-u...
Did Boeing executives go to jail for this disgusting cover up? I hope that the diesel cover-up of Volkswagen and the people that went to jail will motivate governments to pursue criminal charges against Boeing and/or Airbus if similar things happen. Fighting blame by lying and deflection at the risk of death should be a criminal offense. It's mass murder.
I wrote this, not happy it got picked up and posted here without credit. Here's the original Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/adl0jk...
"Picked up without credit" on a platform that provides no attribution whatsoever isn't really a hill to die on.
> A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. -…
That first approximation is only valid for small total numbers of failures. If a failure repeats, the loss function is not simply A times B times C but greater, for example by loss of perceived quality of products, or by criminal investigations against the company and individuals in it.
I forgot why there are no parachutes on planes ? weight ? I'd pay a premium to have my own emergency wingsuit..
> I forgot why there are no parachutes on planes ? weight ? There are parachutes on planes, as in whole airframe parachutes. Just not airliners. See Cirrus aircraft. However, even in a Cirrus, you can only open the parachute within very specific parameters (altitude, airspeed and so on). Exceed these, and your parachute is worthless. For obvious reasons, a whole frame parachute in a 737 is a crazy proposition. It is…
It's still crazy and impractical, but for what it's worth I think that's nobody's suggestion of how something like the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System would work on the scale of an airliner.
The mockups I could find of such proposed systems (e.g. [1] and [2]) all involve just the tube that forms the passenger cabin somehow ejecting as a whole and then parachuting to earth with some system similar to what was used for the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters[3], maybe with added retro-rockets for the landing.
You could also imagine a system where each passenger is sitting in an ejection seat taken from a B-2 or F-35. The cost would be insane, but it could be done.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/01/20/detached-...
2. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/11/why-your-plane...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
when you know all the quirks you won't when notice that you constantly work around them. Unfortunately, we programmers are particularly good at doing this. We are extremely good at being "nice" to software. ("Mechanical sympathy")
My child has bypassed the lock screen on my laptop and caused a gray-screen-of-death, just by banging on the keyboard. I saw it, I am unable to replicate it. Everything should be tested by a child before it can enter production service.