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Comment by snickell | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating timing for this article, as a Boeing 737 Max 9 just experienced a catastrophic depressurization (sounds like everyone was ok) today: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/business/alaska-airlines-...

I've heard Boeing folks suggest that the 1997 acquisition of McDonell-Douglas (who was having serious financial difficulties at the time) ironically resulted in the latter's MBA-heavy management taking over Boeing leadership. The result has been a less profitable company with a now poor and getting worse safety record: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...

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So is the FAA going to ground these planes now or do what they did the last time? At least no one died yet this time around.

For those who still do not understand what unchained captialism looks like. This is a taste of it. The phrase "the market will correct itself" may be true eventually but ignores the hundreds of people that have die before that happens.

I don't think airline manufacturers are a great example of unchained capitalism. They're a god-awful example actually, being heavily chained to nations and in many cases directly supported, protected, and owned by them. There's a reason high-level diplomats are involved in many aircraft sales and you'll see the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia or wherever announce preliminary sales numbers before even the manufacturer does. Airline manufacturers are essentially immune to free-market forces, because their respective governments would never let them fail. Not to mention that - unlike aviation - many other industries don't even have their own dedicated government agencies to regulate them.

Also the airline industry as a whole also has a stellar safety record, Boeing's issues notwithstanding.

That's not to say that your core thesis is necessarily wrong, but airline manufacturers aren't a great vehicle to argue that point.

They are a perfect example of end stage capitalism when en entire industry has concentrated into the 1-2 winner/ and their weight of jobs on elections and the competition of nations and money on corruption outweighs everything.

Like Volkswagen Dieselgate Like Samsung Exploding Phones Like CPU Branch Prediction Idiocy

> Like [..] CPU Branch Prediction Idiocy Can you elaborate on that or point me to some sources as I thought branch prediction was a good thing for speed (until now)

See the CPU slowdowns and related security issues that resulted from branch prediction, basically CPUs would optimistically assume access and so could be tricked into executing what you wanted...which there was no OS or security level control that could be used to fix that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...

They had to patch "micro code" to turn off the branch prediction in order to fix the security issues, which if they hadn't had that basically a ton of institutions would have been SOL (think banks unable to patch security holes in their computer systems - bodes poorly if you also realize banks aren't usually able to patch their systems overnight).

While the summary in this reply is at best misleading if not simply wrong, the linked Wikipedia article is good. I recommend just reading that article and disregarding the comment.

Also yes, branch prediction is "a good thing" without which processors wouldn't be able to reach the performance they have today. Starving the whole instructing pipeline at every branch for dozens of cycles is not great.

Even the processor on the BCM2835 used in the first raspberry PI had branch prediction, and for good reason.

"While the summary in this reply is at best misleading if not simply wrong" - only if you take the summary too literally.

Slow-downs of up to at least 30% did in fact occur (with the older hardware): https://www.techradar.com/news/more-details-emerge-on-how-mu...

As for assuming access and tricking into execution of what you wanted, branching forms the foundation for many if not all OS level security features, in the form of boolean flags, bits behind protected memory (protected by more branching), etc. If the result of a compare causes code to execute that should not (for security reasons), then you have caused execution of what you wanted, which can lead to exposure of e.g. operating system secrets. And with such access it then becomes (sometimes) possible to executing more of what you wanted.

I.e. trusted code could be used to cause insecure results.

Oversimplification, sure, but the truth (exposure of register results due to fault of the hardware) is overly technical and under-emphasizes the severity of the issue, so it is somewhat intentionally misleading...

No way that they are going to ground them now. Last time they were delaying the grounding as much as possible even after the second fatal crash. They grounded it only after a lot of other countries already did it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/06/boeing-737-max-9-grounding-a...

you're using one of the most regulated and government lobbied industries as an example of "unchained capitalism" ? Boeing would have went bankrupt years ago if it wasn't for their sweetheart government contracts and favors given due to lobbying

- Today - "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout" (47 comments, so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774

What would it need so the US government takes over the company and puts the engineers in charge? Hadn't NASA been run like that at least until some point in the 80s or so? I don't know about those contexts at all, would just like to wrap my head around what was and is possible or not in the US.

I just don’t think that would happen. The government seems impotent to do anything that is for the greater good if there are corporate interests (not capitalist but corporate, i.e. this Q bonuses > long term business value).

A family member of a senator or congressman must perish in an accident before any legislation will occur.

I also remember reading about the damage from that acquisition. I wonder if it would have eventually occurred anyway as that level of short-sighted thinking is so pervasive in industry now.

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