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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

bbc.com

541–550 of 618 posts

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#541
post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, it would be nice of you if you at least addmitted that the front page as opposed to /active is heavily curated and hand-picked by you and other moderators. Anyone who has been on HN long enogh can see this, there is no point in phrasing it otherwise. And I guess people will be ok with this as long you guys are transparent about it.

I've posted thousands of comments about that over 10 years, starting on the day I took over Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494621 (March 2014)

I don't know why you expect people will find your old comment.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#542
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's an infinite number of alternate explanations I see only one reasonably acceptable alternate explanation. He either committed suicide or was suicided by someone at Boeing terrified about what would happen to them in jail.

Or killed by a nation state that thrives on creating conflict by amplifying two sided situations that lead to increased polarization and more instability… the problem with speculation is it’s just that speculation… I’m going to wait and see

> Or killed by a nation state that thrives on creating conflict

This just a wildly fanciful excuse, it has never happened in American soil.

oh wait, you mean the CIA?

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#543
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide evidence that the term "mainstream media" has its origins in far right politics.

No one has claimed that the term "mainstream media" has its origins in far right politics. The claim made upthread is that the term "mainstream media" is a dogwhistle term often employed by the right wing. I will not be providing evidence of that , as ample enough evidence for that can be found easily with a simple internet search.

[flagged]

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#544
post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World leaders have way too much on their plate to be personally involved in assassinating random foreign citizens for high-degree political effects . If you see this headline, and story, and immediately think of Putin, that is an unhealthy level of conspiratorial thinking. There is literally no evidence to support this line.

I don't think anyone actually believes Putin personally organises many individual operations in foreign countries. You're just getting hung up on a common shortcut: "Putin" means "someone under Putin's (not even direct) command" here.

This is a niche, US specific issue. Assassinations expose agents that take years to plant. If Russia wanted to get involved, they would honey trap executives, hack them, etc.

Getting involved at this low level is absurd.

It’s like finding a Turd on you lawn, and claiming it’s part of a Russian Plot.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we reading through the same set of comments? I see nothing wrong with people speculating over something like this.

The lack of information renders such speculation necessarily vacuous, and it quickly degrades into dueling assertions of worldviews. There are lots of websites where that sort of thing runs unchecked. To the extent this isn't one, that's one of the reasons I prefer this one.

We do have information.

the guy is a whistleblower, went to court day 1, missed court day 2, and was found dead in his vehicle of unnatural causes.

attaching the adjective vacuous doesn't actually strengthen your point.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#546
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emotional strain of being a whistleblower and having your colleagues now see you as the enemy This is a problem. Would you really see a whistleblower as your enemy? Is your identity so intertwined with your job that you take legal action against your employers so personally? Do you think your employer has that much loyalty to you? Boeing just had layoffs in December. I'm sure the issues this guy was uncovering pl…

>We should all hold our bosses accountable And how are we supposed to do that? The entire point of a corporation's structure is that power flows exclusively down.

Unionize.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#547
post #385

"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

It was a breach of their guidelines to report a method of suicide, so it sounds like they were just fixing that. This is standard in the UK because of evidence showing that reporting methods can be followed by further suicides. https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/harm-an... Suicide, Attempted Suicide, Self-Harm and Eating Disorders 5.3.45 Suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm should be portrayed w…

All these guidelines are what is making BBC unreadable for me. The language they use is just so artificial. I understand why they do, and how they feel like they have a responsibility to "optimize" language for some metrics, but in my opinion what really matters is the objective reality, not the phrasing. Maybe they could report more on the NHS inability to cope with mental health patients rather than avoid using the word gunshot in a country where gun ownership is so scarce.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#548
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And they do. The functioning ones, at least. Corrupt democracies obviously don't, but that's the nature of corruption. But I'm pretty sure the best education systems are generally found in democracies.

Do "democracy", "functioning", "obviously", "don't", "is/am/are", have precise, useful and non-misinformative meanings in this context? In other important fields (anything involving money for example, or programming ), do we sometimes discuss things accurately , and consider things with respect to what is or may be possible, and (actually, objectively) true (basically: pursue optimality)? Might it be at least plausib…

You can deconstruct language all you want, but it's not going to change basic facts. You're not going to find quality education in North Korea. You will find it in Finland.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this situation I don’t think you can attribute it to capitalism because Boeing is a defacto monopoly. Capitalism should lead to competition. Competition should lead to alternatives when one of the market participants has quality control issues.

Unfortunately, "should" is doing some heavy lifting here...In reality, the constant requirement for MORE profit makes it so that every aspect of business or production, including quality control, is a slider conflicted with profit, and sacrificed until it needs to be corrected, as little as possible.

Quality control is only conflicted with profit when profit isn't dependent on quality. Boeing has clearly taken a huge financial hit over this, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to say that they were too obsessed with profit.

You could argue that they were too lazily profit motivated, that they were moving sliders to reduce costs without considering consequences. But capitalism doesn't incentivize laziness and it did not reward them for it here.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#550
post #173
post #10

He was scheduled to appear for day two of his deposition testimony the morning of his death. Had he died Sat night instead of Sat morning, the transcript of Saturday's testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can't happen now and whatever he was going to say in Saturday's testimony is lost forever.

> the transcript of Saturday's testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can't happen now I'm not so sure: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_confront_witness : > In Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719 (1968), the Court recognized a common law exception to the Confrontation Clause's requirement when a witness was unavailable and, during previous judicial proceedings, had testified against…

And depositions are taken under oath, at least, so it is at least sworn testimony rather than just random conversations or documents that would normally need to be sworn to at trial to lay a foundation.

Boeing going to throw all their weight at motions to exclude these transcriptions, though.

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