FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes • Hacker News Board

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#301

Post by magduf » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #299

magduf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly; another 9/11 situation is impossible now. They just need to keep doing screenings of passengers and their carry-ons to make sure no one can bring obvious weapons on board; anything else is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. If someone tries to hijack the plane using razor blades or whatever, the passengers will literally murder them.

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not. If not you have a lot of faith in people's willingness to sacrifice themselves to save others.

I guess you haven't been paying attention, because there have been hijacking attempts since 9/11, and they did not go very well for the hijackers.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#302

Post by magduf » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #279

magduf wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly; another 9/11 situation is impossible now. They just need to keep doing screenings of passengers and their carry-ons to make sure no one can bring obvious weapons on board; anything else is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. If someone tries to hijack the plane using razor blades or whatever, the passengers will literally murder them.

It still doesn't hurt to keep them out of the cockpit, though. Quickly stabbing the pilot to death is likely to at least kill or injure a plane's worth of passengers.

True, but what if the pilot is having an emergency, or the copilot has decided to commit suicide while the pilot went to the bathroom? There should be a way of getting the door open quickly if enough people authorize it (perhaps at least 2 crewmembers).

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#303

Post by magduf » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #250

linuxftw wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. Bonuses are paid for revenue, not for not killing folks.

> You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. What sort of mindset must one have to assume that once a person becomes a "manager" or "executive" they are suddenly immoral or evil? Such an odd worldview. I guarantee no one at Boeing make the conscious effort to kill hundreds of people for a bonus. Mistakes happen. People of all standing are corrupt. We fix the issues…

Sociopaths are highly overrepresented among corporate executives. No, people don't suddenly become evil and amoral when they become an executive; evil and amoral people are simply more likely to reach those positions, precisely because they're evil and amoral.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#304

Post by magduf » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #224

sjy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that attitude is part of the problem. If you're competent, it's usually much easier to find a new job than it is to take on entrenched cultural and funding problems that create risks. This further entrenches the problems by driving out dissenters, and if you work for a regulator, the 'creative destruction' of the free market can't fix it either.

While all true, by quitting you escalate the problem. If upper layers "solve" it by hiring less competent people, then that is something on their conscience. When the problem is at the top, just bearing with it at the bottom will not help at all. Even if you manage to save lives, you virtually sacrifice your own.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#305

Post by petascale » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #294

petascale wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a web/game developer, you forgot to include the OS and the drivers in the lines of code involved in executing the stuff you are writing. The Linux kernel was 15M lines in 2013 [1], more than half of that was drivers. Windows XP was apparently 45M lines, the 2009 Debian distribution 300M lines [2]. So you're into millions of lines just to execute "Hello world" on a PC. Simple control systems generally don't use an…

Are you suggesting a passenger car runs its own Linux distro? What would be the reason, other than Not Built Here syndrome? (Or the goal to deceive regulators.) How many I/O devices/drivers does a pacemaker talk to? How many of those are written by/customized by the pacemaker's developers? If you include the underlying stack, then also my Hello world runs on tens of millions of lines of code (Browser+OS).

> How many I/O devices/drivers does a pacemaker talk to?

A pacemaker would presumably be similar to Arduino: A simple processor, no OS. 100k lines (your numbers) isn't all that much, given that C standard libs are into the tens of thousands alone. Pacemakers have sensors to detect heartbeat, logic to send an electric pulse only when needed, and have an interface where medical personell can hook up a computer to adjust some parameters. So 2-3 IO channels at a minimum (one or more sensors, one or more outputs for the electric pulse, and some sort of wireless interface for adjustments).

> Are you suggesting a passenger car runs its own Linux distro?

According to Quora (last link in my reply above) the most common alternatives are Windows Embedded Automotive, a Linux derivative, and QNX. Why? To avoid writing millions of lines of fairly complex code on their own, of course. Just like a desktop developer saves a ton of work by writing on top of the OS rather than implementing their own OS from scratch.

> If you include the underlying stack, then also my Hello world runs on tens of millions of lines of code.

Yes, but that's the point: The numbers for lines of code in a pacemaker or car includes the entire stack. If you want to compare it to web development, you'll need to include the full stack there too.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#306

Post by jmcqk6 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

timeisapear wrote: post #260

hwestiii wrote: post #234

This all points up the glaring conflicts of interest in the corporate business environment. Most of us think that Boeing is the business of building airplanes, but as a publicly traded company, its real business is making money for its shareholders, and aerospace is just a vehicle toward that end. The Boeing CEO's steadfast refusal to take responsibility for these two crashes are nothing more than CYA designed to lim…

I'm not sure I buy the risk/market trade-off. You could replace Boeing with any car manufacturer that still has publicly traded shareholder needs.

The world is full of examples of companies maximizing profits while screwing over their customers. Is that what was happening here? What's the alternative answer? They just didn't think it through? They rushed because of FOMO?

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#307

Post by kevin_b_er » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #207

If only the FAA wasn't corrupt and did their job of testing, verifying and CERTIFYING the 787 and 737max in the first place rather than outsourcing it to the VERY MANUFACTURER Boeing. I don't know where y'all went to school, but I was never able to self-grade my year-end exams. Absolutely unthinkable banana republic behaviour and not a single head rolled (except for the about 350 poor dead souls who had to pay for th…

What you are looking at is the direct consequence of deregulation. Profit over people is the logic of deregulation. The people want regulation to protect the populace and vested interests for profit do not want that regulation.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#308

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #285

tomp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are enough businesses that happily create planes without putting profit before people. Are there? Besides Boeing and Airbus, which other company makes safe (or not, in case of Boeing) passenger planes? AFAIK it's a duopoly.

Embraer and Bombardier, possibly Sukhoi and Comac. But they don't make large, long range ones.

Does Sukhoi have a better safety record than Boeing?

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#309

Post by toss1 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #250

linuxftw wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. Bonuses are paid for revenue, not for not killing folks.

> You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. What sort of mindset must one have to assume that once a person becomes a "manager" or "executive" they are suddenly immoral or evil? Such an odd worldview. I guarantee no one at Boeing make the conscious effort to kill hundreds of people for a bonus. Mistakes happen. People of all standing are corrupt. We fix the issues…

You have the cause and effect backwards.

I have had the opportunity to observe a very wide variety of businesses in several industries and have noticed the same thing as multiple studies - a high degree of sociopathy among execs. My conjecture is that this is both because aggressive sociopathy will help people rise among the ranks, and also because the structure of business will tend to actively select for those traits (unless active counter-selection is implemented).

So, sure, one does not automatically change by becoming a manager (although there are psych studies indicating high income causing reduced compassion for others), but there is good reason to expect higher "immoral or evil" behavior in higher ranks.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#310

Post by blackflame7000 » Thu, Jun 27, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #180

blackflame7000 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a lot more than just 2 rudder incidents. USAir Flight 427 United Airlines Flight 585 Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 Silkair Flight 185 Copa Airlines Flight 201 China Southern Airlines Flight 3943 MetroJet Flight 2710

I mean. I am going by wikipedia here but most of the things you've said in this subthread seem to be inaccurate. It wasn't the original 737. It wasn't the NG. And most of the accidents you've listed were not caused by that particular rudder design problem (as far as I can tell, 3 were, maybe?). You keep adding new inaccurate things without the slightest acknowledgement you might have misremembered or misstated someth…

Well, Wikipedia is where I got those 7 accidents moron. It took me 5 minutes of research. ALL WERE ATTRIBUTED TO RUDDER PROBLEMS! Big deal NG vs Original, if we're being specific there are actually 10 versions of the 737. The point is still the same, they had a critical flaw and overcame it. Is that too complicated for you to understand or do you want to debate Airplane versions because you think that makes you smart?