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Comment by Stryder | Hacker News Reader

The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives. Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you.

This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow. Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable.

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This is some Challenger O-ring type of shitshow.

I think it's worse.

The first crash can be compared to the Challenger shitshow. It was a (massive) engineering mistake, which lead to the Lion Air plane crashing. Looking at the history of the 737 in general and the 737-MAX specifically it was rekless, but I'm pretty certain not intentional or foreseen by Boeing.

That massively changed by the fact that they didn't immediately pull the plane after this crash and went into deep analysis mode to really evaluate the cause. Instead they smeared everybody but themselves, developed a completely useless checklist without really knowing or (apparently) caring if it's useful at all and let that deathtrap fly.

The second crash, in my opinion is corporate mass murder for profit. Maybe not legally, but morally most certainly.

"The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives."

There is always a trade off, your statement is too bold for a world of limited resources. We can use engineering to make the roads safer. Spent a trillion USD on road safety will save lives for sure. But maybe it is spend better on cancer R&D efforts?

The safest plane would be the most expensive and most uncompetitive since it needs unlimited resources and unlimited time for being designed.

I must say I disagree with this stance.

It's not so much a matter of ressources than of specifically engineering excellence. There's plentiful examples of a much better product that was created with less ressources than the shitty existing competition (this must be commonplace for HN members).

I'm convinced the safest plane is not the most expensive, it's the one designed through sound and clear-sighted engineering.

Since there won't be an ultimately and best product for ever, there is always a way to improve things. Then time and financial restrains come into place again.

Are you an engineer? Your argument sounds naive. Or to give a counter example: In the Soviet Union there were likely more accidents (normalized) compared to the west. Yet, they did not focus on maximizing profits.

How is that a counter example? Just because you're not focusing on profits doesn't mean you are focusing on rigorous engineering.

rigorous engineering comes for free?

I am, and I have experienced many times what I'm talking about.

A simpler yet effective design (may it be initial or rework) comes at a much lower cost than a flawed one, which inevitably aggregates irrelevant complexities.

You're talking about the cost of the product, but what about the cost of redesigning in itself? Including the opportunity cost of delaying the product to keep reworking the design.

"aggregates irrelevant complexities"

Who decides this? This is not a trivial question.

The F-35 fighter is a good example. Trades many disadvantages (not fast, not good in dog-fighting, tremendous long maintenance time, low payload etc.) for one advantage. The F-35 may or may not be invisible to an able opponent. But this decision is a tremendous difficult one. Based on your argument, it would be better to stick with a simple design. This was worked for the Soviet Union in WW2 (don't build the best tank, build a decent one, build many).

You may like this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)

Thanks for the suggested read, sounds interesting indeed.

I'm not comparing simple vs. complex but rather sound vs. flawed, although often sound = simpler than flawed.

The 737 here is yet another example of this : - the MAX design is flawed : faulty risk assessment of MCAS, seemingly unstable airframe in some configurations - a likely sound design could be : airframe rework, thorough risk assessment, extra pilot training...

While the flawed design came at a lower initial cost, it will now overrun the cost of a likely sound one (further rework + retrofit + sales/reputation damage + legal), including the cost of a probable longer design phase in the latter.

(I concede that legal/sales costs are not directly technical debt costs).

> Realistically and pragmatically speaking, you only ever get to have just one single shot at establishing and maintaining that kind of life/death level of trust. Fuck it up, and you're gone- quite literally, mind you.

I wish this statement was held with as much as accountability as this comment implies. But have any of the major outlets been discussing potential prison sentences for Boeing or FAA employees / executives or potentially even board members? If you want accountability in today's age it seems the pressure needs to be applied at the point where financial decisions are held with more precedent than safety of life.

Boeing stock was up today on the glimmer of hope that the "software fix was working". Investors are assuming the stock is on sale and this only impacts Boeing for, what, a few weeks? I said something similar in another comment but I think Volkswagen is going to do more jail time and have more brand detriment than Boeing or the FAA will. Egregious doesn't begin to describe the misdirection of conversation. Why is the focus not yet on who will be sentenced for death over profits?

> Investors are assuming the stock is on sale and this only impacts Boring for, what, a few weeks?

Reminds me of the Equifax breach. Stock tumbles then recovers. Overall, it validates that breaches are not a liability; therefore, additional resources to address future problems could be seen as a moot point.

Same with Boeing. If there is no impact to the company, then why change the business model?

Equifax is not comparable to this. The difference with Equifax is that there has been little actual damage compare to how much data got compromised. With Boeing we've had hundreds who got killed.

If the world was fair they should all (decision makers at Boeing and FAA both) be packed by the lot and send to stand trial in Ethiopia and Indonesia for 300+ murder, which is what I consider this to be.

If you don't have food in your belly and you steal you get jailed. You are not satisfied with your million dollar salary and your billion dollar company profit and don't care if people get killed, you get to have PR firm write how sorry and sincere you are. Justice seems truly blind so many times just not in the way the phrase was coined.

>If the world was fair they should all (decision makers at Boeing and FAA both) be packed by the lot and send to stand trial in Ethiopia and Indonesia for 300+ murder

And they're totally going go get a fair trial and not some sort of kangaroo court to appease the locals?

I actually thought about that a little also but if I have to find a fairer choice between Boeing most likely to get away with a slap in US because big corps almost always do (too big to fail) vs. them getting taken down by a kangeroo court in those two countries it's not hard not to pick a potential kangeroo court.

But I do get your point.

The difference between Wolkswagen and Boeing is the latter is an american company and hence is probably not going to face billion of dollars of damage from american authorities and current administration. Probably no jail time either.

That and Volkswagen knowingly and deliberately conspired to break the law.

Agreed. It remains to be seen if Boeing deliberately used a loophole to avoid reclassification of the MAX8. If so, I'm curious to see how this would be different in a court of law. Especially if Boeing is compelled to provide email around the comms with specific regard to MAX8 certification.

Black box high five for the win, amirite?! Roll it back up to the top of the hill and lets see if it records something different...

It's sad, but most faults seem to be like this. First one is treated as an anomaly, second one is treated as the start of a trend. It happens so many times I'm glad I'm not working with human lives.

Jamais deux sans trois

“Never twice without a third time.”

>The integrity of engineering excellence should never be sacrificed for profit and/or conveniency in places where it involves human lives.

That's just unrealistic. Unless you want plane and car rides to cost as much as a trip to space, after all, since everything would need to be engineered to that level of quality.

Finish reading first, and then spend some time thinking before responding.

I said: "Accidents are one thing; incompetency or, worse yet, callous indifference is absolutely unacceptable."

I continue to be fascinated with consumers who assume the role of shareholder in times of crisis, even against their own interests.

Affordable air travel is in most people's interests.

Safe travel surprasses affordable for ALL customers not most.

Neither safe nor affordable are booleans. They are on a scale, and a dependency exists between them.

Anybody may have a different judgement with respect to exactly where on the scale is appropriate, but we cannot just pretend that there's no trade-off to be made. Or that absolute safety is even a possibility.

It's pretty freaking safe, isn't it? We've literally had zero-fatality years in the US. That doesn't happen through good luck alone. Clearly the manufacturers, regulators, and operators are doing almost everything right.

Then why do people still drive (i.e. use cars)?

Because they think it is safe.

'most people' don't fly at all

Talk about a strawman, mate.

Or you could fly Airbus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

In my mind, the difference between science and engineering is that science is concerned about what's provably true, whereas engineering (and I include applied math and even medicine here) is about getting to a result.

Therefore, our medicine is not perfectly safe, our cars are not perfectly safe, our building are not perfectly safe, we don't / can't provide 100% health coverage to everyone, and so on... but in aggregate, they make the world a better place, so it's worth it.

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