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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

bbc.com

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Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#161

Post by anigbrowl »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #96
anigbrowl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military and intelligence apparatus does not care You don't need the whole apparatus, just someone who has been trained by it and is morally flexible. Well, you don't even need that, but obviously people with professional experience tend to do a better job. We do not have evidence yet of this being a murder-for-hire or similar, but you're insisting on the impossibility of such when in reality it's not all that un…

Pretending this is common in the West is absurd. Why wouldn’t POTUS have journalists killed then? Surely he’s more powerful than boeings CEO.

Murder-for-hire happens regularly. Corporate involvement is very unusual, but that might be colored by a greater ability to throw resources at the problem. Most murder-for hire prosecutions that make the news seem to have something in common - the protagonists were amateurish, typically motivated by personal grudges, and spent relatively small sums of money (Why wouldn’t POTUS have journalists killed then?

One current candidate for that office has lawyers who argue a POTUS would be immune from prosecution for such acts.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#164

Post by dehrmann »

jjk166 wrote: post #9
torstenvl wrote: post #4

"Self-inflicted wound"? Obviously the story is still developing but I'm immediately skeptical. EDIT: Also weird that BBC is already memory-holing that it was a gunshot wound. archive.is has the original. https://archive.is/wj0LE

Self inflicted wound in the middle of several days of scheduled depositions. Just about as suspicious as could be.

I'm not convinced. Boeing doesn't want more attention, depositions are stressful, and whistleblowers are predisposed to martyrdom. If you're Boeing, this doesn't make the problem go away, it makes it worse.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#165

Post by d--b »

What a strange article.

- whistleblower dies

Blablabla

- self inflicted wound

Blablabla

- he was bound to testify the next day

Blablabla

- he was found dead in his truck in a parking lot

It sounds like the journalist thinks it was murder but can’t write it cause it’s illegal somehow. The result is a piece that almost reads like a satyrical piece from the Onion.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#166

Post by hayst4ck »

falsandtru wrote: post #160
falsandtru wrote: post #103

Hm, this thread once again slid down the top page at an alarming rate, even though the safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Hacker News is surprisingly dismissive of user interests and votes. Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.

[flagged]

A comment with +40/-32 and a comment with +8/-0 are moderated differently despite both being +8. That's a good faith policy that makes sense if you don't want to promote highly divisive "fight provoking" content.

I think it's also worth pointing out that this is done algorithmically and not randomly or arbitrarily by moderators based on their prejudices.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#167

Post by dang »

anigbrowl wrote: post #156
dang wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a technical article. It's a lurid media topic* about a suspicious-looking alleged suicide with zero information for a substantive discussion, and tons of fuel for sinister speculation. That's not what HN is supposed to be for. However, we can give this one a pass because the ongoing Boeing saga is of interest and there's clearly a community appetite to discuss this development. Edit: even though the thread i…

Flatly untrue. It's a soberly worded recitation of the available facts with multiple caveas; the frenzy of speculation stems from Boeing's increasingly tattered corporate reputation, not the story. This was written to far higher standards than (for example) a story from the Daily Mail or New York Post; I'm astonished that you would characterize this way.

Sorry—I'm tired and expressed that carelessly, and you're quite right. I wasn't talking about the article and am glad that it is as good as you say. In fact I merged the other thread into this one precisely because the BBC article was better.

What I mean is that the story itself, i.e. the significant new information, is a lurid apparent suicide, and there aren't any details about that, other than it happened. Not because the article is bad but because that is the only piece of information available.

The interest in such a story is neither technical nor intellectual and we shouldn't pretend that it is. It's a suspicious death story with sinister overtones. The curiosity here is not primarily intellectual, which means it's not really a good story for HN, but I'm giving it a pass because it is strange enough to be different and there's a community appetite to discuss it. Normally the latter isn't enough to justify a story remaining on HN's front page but there are degrees of community appetite and I recognize this one.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#168

Post by esoterica »

calamari4065 wrote: post #43
esoterica wrote: post #19

[flagged]

You do know that professional hitmen actually exist, right? You can straight up pay a guy to kill someone for you. It would be utter insanity to ask someone who legally works for you to kill someone. Which is why that doesn't happen. What actually happens is someone tells someone to deal with the guy and a paper bag full of cash appears in front of Joe's Killin Place in the middle of the night.

No, professional corporate hitmen do not exist in contemporary America. Again, movies and video games are not real life. The only "hitmen" in real life are idiot junkies who get hired by their idiot cousin to kill their estranged wife in exchange for drug money and then immediately get caught because violent criminals are morons and not criminal masterminds.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#169

Post by SilasX »

d--b wrote: post #165

What a strange article. - whistleblower dies Blablabla - self inflicted wound Blablabla - he was bound to testify the next day Blablabla - he was found dead in his truck in a parking lot It sounds like the journalist thinks it was murder but can’t write it cause it’s illegal somehow. The result is a piece that almost reads like a satyrical piece from the Onion.

And, like clockwork, it's at the top of the /r/nottheonion sub:

https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1bcfceq/boeing...

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#170

Post by leetrout »

yifanl wrote: post #61

I'm just going to take this story at face value, there's an infinite number of alternate explanations that I'd be powerless to talk about. I've had my own (thankfully brief) moments where I've thought about suicide just from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing. Mr Barnett worked for the same company for over three decades and physically watched…

> from the perception that my coworkers, my bosses, the entire world, just does not care about doing the right thing.

How did you overcome this?

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