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Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

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Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#61

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

burfog wrote: post #18
teawrecks wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandaid fix if I've ever heard of one.

It's proper. This is exactly how you do things with life-critical embedded software. You detect when things are crazy, which of course shouldn't happen but nevertheless does, and you react in a way that is hopefully not disastrous. The alternative is to ignore the problem. Sensors go bad. Actuators go bad. Voting hardware goes bad. Message routing goes bad. Even the RAM sometimes goes bad. When the hardware is failin…

I guess most users dont know that- but the software in parts of your car might be crashprone too.. you just dont realize that- cause the watchdog detects the stall, and resets it..

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#62

Post by markdown »

xvf22 wrote: post #6
pcl wrote: post #2

> Because the fault was triggered by specific streams of erroneous flight data, a new software patch can be devised that monitors the computer for that highly unusual condition and prevents movement of the stabilizer when it occurs, one of the people said. Oh man. That sounds like a mess.

It's one of those fixes where they add up the value of human life if something goes wrong and say 'OK we can handle that, ship it"

Well so far they've been lucky because they only killed brown people in a far away country. Those don't count for much.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#63

Post by Aloha »

swiley wrote: post #53
alexis_fr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are made aware that Boeing wasn’t serious with engineering since 2012. And the FAA paid Boeing consultants to inspect Boeing, which by all layman’s definition fall under the terms of “corrupted”. Who wouldn’t pay attention to the little mention in Google Flights with the brand of the plane?

>And the FAA paid Boeing consultants to inspect Boeing, which by all layman’s definition fall under the terms of “corrupted”. In my experience this is pretty normal for specialized stuff like this, it has nothing to do with corruption.

It's this way in my industry as well, it's really hard to find people who have not worked for one of the big two vendors in my field.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#64

Post by Yajirobe »

markdown wrote: post #62
xvf22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of those fixes where they add up the value of human life if something goes wrong and say 'OK we can handle that, ship it"

Well so far they've been lucky because they only killed brown people in a far away country. Those don't count for much.

Excuse you?? I've just reported you for this despicable comment.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#65

Post by tyingq »

Maakuth wrote: post #41
thelittleone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t aware the compute power was low on the 737. Interested if you have some more info? Always thought they would spec a substantially more processing capability than required. I understand economics are a factor but surely it’s not through necessity to save power?

Here's an article about it. According to this piece, 737 avionics run on a pair of 80286s. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/06/boeings-software-fix-f...

If true it uses a 286, for some relative comparison, the fastest 286 is 1.5 MIPS. A run of the mill current Arduino is probably 20 MIPS, and a Raspberry PI3 is 2451 MIPS.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#66

Post by the-dude »

jacobush wrote: post #55
alexis_fr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the human life calculation worked well this time. As far as I see, Boeing lost more than the sum of the human lives; they also lost reputation for everything new they’ve designed in the last 7 years being corrupted, and they also engulfed the reputation of FAA with them, whose agents would fit the definition of “corrupted” by any people’s definition (I know, they are not, they just used agents of Boeing t…

There is so much of U.K. which is incredible and depressing at the same time. Completely pummelled by war, (receiving no aid like West Germany did) they managed to, in 1949, release a Space Age passenger commercial airliner, defining the genre. It looks modern even today. Yet, fumbled the ball. They also had a space program, closed it down after their first satellite, which was a success. Concorde! (With France.) It…

The U.K. had an educational computer initiative with the BBC and Acorn. Worked wonders. Then they discontinued the effort.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#67

Post by paulie_a »

thelittleone wrote: post #39
aurelwu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like adding a heuristic which works most of the time which is something I can see myself doing to cover some pathfinding issue in a game where it's sufficient if it works 99,9% of the time or when working on a simulation where I can look on the result data afterwards and can see if something looks highly unusual despite the heuristic and improve it iteratively - a luxury you don't get with air planes, at…

Wasn’t aware the compute power was low on the 737. Interested if you have some more info? Always thought they would spec a substantially more processing capability than required. I understand economics are a factor but surely it’s not through necessity to save power?

NASA supposedly bought 386 chips from eBay

The lesson is real engineers do not need row hammer afflicted processing power, they are not running crappy JavaScript. They built something that works and over engineered the hell out it.

Ford in Detroit once lost a mainframe. For 20 years

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#68

Post by _trampeltier »

Aloha wrote: post #7

Imagine if your bugfix process was broadcast to the world, every new IN added to spirateam et al, every new crash condition found by test/QA, every time the software failed in test, it got printed by news organizations the world over. This is world the 737MAX software people are living in, for this alone, they have my utmost respect.

Yes this comes with "we do everything in software".

I work in automation an I guess most of our plc code is much smaller and simpler than just one website.

Software devs still live in this "you can use this software as-is" world. This thinking is just not compatible with, we use software for everything.

Even I liked PLC programming as a younger guy and a kind of I still like to do it .. you can do cool things on the machines .. the way it goes at moment does worry me quiet a bit.

And if you would work in a different job, for ex. design a building or bridges, since ever was this "if you fail, you are in the news".

So please you just software guys, grow up.

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#69

Post by mattlondon »

jacobush wrote: post #55
alexis_fr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the human life calculation worked well this time. As far as I see, Boeing lost more than the sum of the human lives; they also lost reputation for everything new they’ve designed in the last 7 years being corrupted, and they also engulfed the reputation of FAA with them, whose agents would fit the definition of “corrupted” by any people’s definition (I know, they are not, they just used agents of Boeing t…

There is so much of U.K. which is incredible and depressing at the same time. Completely pummelled by war, (receiving no aid like West Germany did) they managed to, in 1949, release a Space Age passenger commercial airliner, defining the genre. It looks modern even today. Yet, fumbled the ball. They also had a space program, closed it down after their first satellite, which was a success. Concorde! (With France.) It…

Generally short-sighted politics gets in the way in the UK based on my own opinion. Support/budgets/etc get withdrawn at precisely the wrong moment (and usually for some petty point-scoring or if ministers are running scared from the media/opposition)

Its happening right now too with electric cars and solar electricity - solar has generally been seen as a success with a lot of installations taking us to 3rd place in Europe for solar megawatts despite there being essentially no sun (1), and EV cars are starting to become something actually viable for most people's lives. The government has just announced that the UK is now legally bound to be carbon neutral by 2050... yet the government chose also to revoke funding and support for both solar and EVs and so subsequently update has plummeted (2, 3) right at this vital point.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy_in_the_European_U... 2 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/08/solar-in... 3 - https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/new-car-sales-fa...

Re: Latest 737 Max Fault That Alarmed Test Pilots Rooted in Software

#70

Post by mattlondon »

the-dude wrote: post #66
jacobush wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much of U.K. which is incredible and depressing at the same time. Completely pummelled by war, (receiving no aid like West Germany did) they managed to, in 1949, release a Space Age passenger commercial airliner, defining the genre. It looks modern even today. Yet, fumbled the ball. They also had a space program, closed it down after their first satellite, which was a success. Concorde! (With France.) It…

The U.K. had an educational computer initiative with the BBC and Acorn. Worked wonders. Then they discontinued the effort.

Yes, although ARM came out of that and now look at that (...or your smartphone) so its not all a disaster.

The Raspberry Pi is a spiritual successor which I am generally pleased to see. The RPi was I think partly responsible for a real Computer Science curriculum getting back into schools ... I hate to say it but I think it was Michael Gove that made this happen!

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