101–110 of 137 posts
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That's an interesting contrast to what I remember Richard Feynman saying about NASA after the Challenger - that the software was the area that was impeccably run compared to everything else.
Programming was a different game back then, when every kb counted. The bar was much higher. Niche PhDs chasing the cutting edge of technology. Now we have web dev.
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Is this an "MBA attitude?" I get the urge to rant, but I feel like even a good MBA would have seen training as a liability to mitigate in the larger business, not a profit center in its own right. A competent exec doesn't structure a business so that "everything is a profit center", as that drives specific behaviors, and you have to be careful about the accountability you put in place and how you're measuring those d…
This is unfortunately a very naive point of view. An exec in charge of training is an exec in charge of a cost center. No one likes costs, so no one appreciates his job and his career is hampered. Turning it into a profit center earns him respect and promotions.
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This was my experience as a contractor for the Navy, years ago. We’ve had radar systems that can detect planes after a reflection on another plane, but the software is dogshit. Someone once told me, it’s because generals and admirals can see hardware, and fell like they got value for their money. Software, not so much. Perhaps it’s something innate in humans. Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel…
> Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel more substantial? This was not really true, the original tear down that found weights was of a counterfeit pair of Beats headphones. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/07/are-beats-headphones-real...
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This was my experience as a contractor for the Navy, years ago. We’ve had radar systems that can detect planes after a reflection on another plane, but the software is dogshit. Someone once told me, it’s because generals and admirals can see hardware, and fell like they got value for their money. Software, not so much. Perhaps it’s something innate in humans. Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel…
Adding weight to headphones does have a practical advantage: it keeps them firmly on your head. I had a relatively expensive - but very lightweight - set of headphones a while ago and I swapped them for a cheaper but heavier pair because they just wouldn’t stay in place.
I would even say it is the opposite: The heavier the headset the tighter its grip has to be so that it stays in place during head movements. A tighter grip means more pressure around the ears, which for most people means less comfort.
I could see that while you concentrate on the feeling of headsets you may have that same bias as most people probably have that heavier equals better (quality, more solidly built), but I doubt that is true for the rest of your brain and your body.
I tried to find something, anything of substance on this concrete subject but this time my Google-foo failed. Links to research would be appreciated, if somebody else has better luck. A possible confounder is that heavier headsets - if it's not a cheat like in the discussed example - might indeed be better built, but I think we are talking about similar built quality here that only differ in weight, and objective criteria, not self-reported biased by already known to exist weightier-is-better value bias.
I only found this, which is really just a statement: "Relation between weight and comfort?" -- https://www.headphonezone.in/pages/headphone-weight
The weight of objects has interesting effects on our judgement: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/holding-heavy-objects-... -- but obviously that does not mean the body sees weight the same, physiologically.
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It feels crazy to me that there's no proper accountability for it. "Let's make training profitable" + every other decision on the software side = 346 dead people. Those deaths weren't an accident, they were a result of Boeing's desire for perpetual growth at any cost, and to try and beat Airbus at their game. No one except the families of the victims will suffer from that. But go ahead and carry a bag of weed and be…
Sadly it's not a feature of Boeing, but a feature of unchecked capitalism.
Many times when there is discussion about issues like the environment there is such a comment blaming capitalism. I can assure you from my own personal live experience and from having seen huge changes after reunification, in capitalism-free East Germany the environment was orders of magnitude worse off than in capitalist West Germany. Don't blame human behaviors on capitalism/socialism/whatever.
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I think that's often the case in any company that doesn't sell software as a product/service. I know automotive companies are really terrible at it. That said, I'm not sure what level of engineering they do anyway. It seems like at best they design the chassis and maybe the engine. Everything else appears to be contracted out to some other firm. Is that the case?
Agreed, my company's biggest problems all come from a lack of basic software/programming skills which they've decided is not something they need to spend any effort on. In the words of my managers, "we are not a software company" and "learning to code is easy" and "eughhh I don't want to learn any of that computer science stuff". That latter one was when I mentioned something about clean code.
Oh boy, that's a good one. Like learning to write and learning to paint are easy. You can easily get SOME result...
By the way, I have automotive experience. They do, and have to, pay well.
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Programming was a different game back then, when every kb counted. The bar was much higher. Niche PhDs chasing the cutting edge of technology. Now we have web dev.
What’s wrong with controlling spacecrafts with JavaScript?
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This was my experience as a contractor for the Navy, years ago. We’ve had radar systems that can detect planes after a reflection on another plane, but the software is dogshit. Someone once told me, it’s because generals and admirals can see hardware, and fell like they got value for their money. Software, not so much. Perhaps it’s something innate in humans. Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel…
> Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel more substantial? This was not really true, the original tear down that found weights was of a counterfeit pair of Beats headphones. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/07/are-beats-headphones-real...
https://medium.com/@BenEinstein/how-it-s-made-series-beats-b...?
Dear bloomberg, ny times and other major news outfits.
Please sort out a decent micropayment solution that works on all news sites without hassle.
I'm willing to pay you a couple cents to read articles linked to by HN and other aggregators. However, I will never subscribe because I'm not interested in the other 99% of your content.
end offtopic rant