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Comment by BrentOzar | Hacker News Reader

I think the comments here say more about us as an audience than they do about the Airbus. We're totally accustomed to hardware & software problems whose solution is, "just restart it," and we don't even find it all that disturbing - mostly just humorous.

Our standards as developers & testers have gotten pretty low.

I think the only way you'd see outrage here at HN is if the restart involved a real physical crash (as opposed to a software one) and the loss of human lives. Otherwise, we're all, "meh."

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The thing here is that the issue is well understood and the root cause is known. We know that rebooting prevents the error.

The problem is when "have you tried rebooting" becomes the first troubleshooting step and you stop investigating.

But if you realise after the investigation that a reboot reliably prevents the issue, it's a worthwhile approach, especially if fixing the error would require many complicated changes that may lead to further errors.

That's not necessarily a "low" standard. It's that the value of preventing a reboot every few days is much lower than other things we could spend our time on. Mandatory oftware perfection would be a huge drag on valuable new features.

I agree with you to a certain degree but appropriateness of the trade off should really depend on where the software is used. Airplane, powerplants, and train signaling systems? I would want longer uptime.

Especially when you compare that to all the other maintenance that has to happen routinely on a plane for it to remain safe. Not a reason to not fix it though.

> Our standards as developers & testers have gotten pretty low.

It's just an unsolved problem. No one never knew how to write complex robust software. Even with memory-safe languages. Even with advanced type systems, generative tests, immutability and advanced concurrency primitives.

And it's not a discipline problem.

Or maybe it is a testament to how high our standards are that the expectation is that we should essentially never have to restart things.

I can't say that my car has ever gone 149 hours without a "reboot" of some kind or another.

Mine sure has, and just about every car these days does. The ECU doesn't lose power when you turn off the car; the only way to "reboot" your car is to disconnect the battery.

It is an issue if they have to reboot it twice.

> I think the only way you'd see outrage here at HN is if the restart involved a real physical crash

Or if it were an American company. There wasn’t any outrage when Germanwings’s lack of attention to their suicidal pilot’s mental health even though there were significant warning signs before he crashed a plane into the Alps. Little outrage over Malaysian Air despite their pilot practicing his suicidal crash in the simulator months before. But for an American company, out come the pitchforks.

The fact that Airbus hasn’t yet had a 350 crash is just happy luck, but the issues are still just as outrage worthy. Where is the rage against the EASA that allowed such a glitch to pass certification? Where are the complaints against EASA outsourcing certification tasks[1] as the FAA was criticized about?

If this were an American company, you’d see plenty of outrage here and it would be related to some flavor of the United States not being leftist enough. (i.e. having lower regulatory strictness, lower taxes and thus an “undersized” bureaucracy. There is an undeniable and distinct anti-American sentiment on HN when it comes to issues like this. From everything such as climate, economic policies, consumer issues, defense, and even food and housing choices of Americans, the US always seems to be held in a persistant, low-level contempt, while almost anything European or Japanese gets a positive initial reaction. This might be a controversial opinion around here, but it’s my perception after being around the HN community for almost 7 years and watching it change from a place that celebrates entrepreneurship, business and capitalism to little more than a better moderated subreddit for those that view American startups and technology with derision and contempt. Actual Marxism ideas get upvoted and free market ideas get downvoted. Which is ironic because Marxism didn’t create anything that keeps many of us highly compensated while working on cool technology. This forum itself wouldn’t even exist were it not for a venture capital firm. Most of the tech stack we all use comes from entrepreneurship and innovation from the free market.

Since Airbus is essentially a state-owned enterprise in the practical sense, of course it isn’t going to result in any outrage — or at least not more than one of those dirty, evil, profit-oriented American corporations.

[1] https://etendering.ted.europa.eu//cft/cft-display.html?cftId...

Both of the examples you gave were of mental health issues, which we're shitty at handling as a society. I've seen multiple posts on reddit about people "glamorizing" mental health problems, when really they're just more comfortable openly talking about it. People still just don't want to hear it. We don't see these problems as real issues to be dealt with as a society. There's still widespread belief that these are personal failings. People need to shut up about it and get on with their life. Otherwise, we need to identify these people so we can avoid them.

Your claim that American companies are getting the shaft is complete nonsense. It's classic US conservative insanity. It is not a shock, nor is it anti-American bias, that concious engineering decisions which result in loss of life get more scrutiny and outrage. There was plenty of outrage for the VW emissions scandle. Here, not only has there not been any deaths, but an update's been provided. If you seriously think there will be no outrage for a european engineering disaster here, you're crazy.

I even dispute the notion that there is anything wrong with being anti-American. It's not a personal insult unless one chooses to take it as such. I am American by birth, have lived abroad, and find the way things are done in the US to be abhorrent on many fronts. It seems to me anything done well elsewhere is rejected out of some weird sense of independence. America's profit driven healthcare business ruined my life and is still making it miserable. The only decent care I have ever received was in a European country. There is a default idea on the internet that America is the world. There is a default idea in much of America that conservatism is "true America". There is a default idea that success as a human is "being rich" and "winning". My family has this belief system and anytime those beliefs or the country are criticized, even if its one amongst 100 comments, its focused on as how everyone is biased against them and they are "victimized" by this. I find the incredibly common idea in the USA, that one should be less critical of the nation because "this is the best place for us to get rich" is the opposite to what I consider important values, and is in fact antithetical to the hacker ethos. The hackers I admire don't do so to enrich themselves...they do it to fix problems and improve the world, even if only for one other person.

The only thing I'll say is that I get annoyed by certain knee jerk anti-American, pro foreign sentiments. It can be a bit much. Especially when other countries are wrestling with the same issues, and may even be worse in some regards.

Otherwise, I agree. Specifically, the criticism of our health care system. How people can see no issue with it is beyond me. There's conservatives that literally think the problem is us treating people in the ER, instead of letting them die. Disgusting.

OP is completely off base on this issue. The examples he gave are not an apples to apples comparison. The idea that we wouldn't criticize an EU company for making boneheaded business/engineering decisions that cost lives is ludicrous.

I just don't think nationalism is anything but damaging. I am a human being. My self worth isn't related to where I was randomly born. I have no allegiance or pride owed to a passport. Such tribalism is used to justify wars and greed and lots of bad stuff. Even in in posts like these the conversation at its root is "offense" at criticism of "team". Poor behavior is poor behavior regardless of who is doing it, but some teams think theirs is more justified. The team that I think matters is humanity. Nationality is an administrative bother to me.

—-WARNING: META-DISCUSSION——

Fact check: Harsh but mostly true. This used to be the forum for the rationalist and capitalist community in tech, or at least people that tolerated them or were willing to engage without downvotes. Now it attracts those with such distaste for rationalist viewpoints to the point pg himself is altering his essays[1]. His original point was much clearer and more memorable than his revision. Are there any alternatives to this site that look more like the news.ycombinator of 5+ years ago? Maybe a discord or subreddit or telegram group?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html

EDIT: the replies to your post only reinforce your point, you are being called a kook (“completely insane”) for your post, which is antithetical to civil discussion.

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