No, you don't, because you continue to make worthless tautological statements like "anyone can make mistakes".

I've designed an airplane. I have no experience in doing so. I have no more than a layman's understanding of aerodynamics. I know nothing of materials science. I've hardly even looked inside any kind of engine. I have heard some fancy words before, though, and I'm sure my quick read of various Wikipedia articles has prepared me.

I'm going to start building these planes and selling them to the public as a great way to travel.

Do you think it is overreacting for an aviation engineer to tell people that my plane is dangerous, just because Boeing sometimes makes mistakes?

If you don't, then you shouldn't have a problem with the public being told that Cryptocat is dangerous.

If you do think it's overreacting, well, as it happens I'm no more competent to deal with insanity than with aeronautics.

Can you read the author's mind? How do you know what they know?

It seems to me that perhaps all those things considered, they still think Boeing is at fault. It's not like you told us what the industry standard is, or any of that stuff.

That feels really really naive and an unfair judgement to make. I don't need to be an aeronautical engineer to know about other market force at play, and a repeated lack of ownership of the issue by Boeing: incentive for Boeing to not go out of business, airlines to get a return on the airlines they bought, etc. They reek of dishonesty on this matter.

As a traveler I would absolutely bucket that airplane model into the "Something is fundamentally wrong" and distrust.

You mean working with safety critical systems with hardware software co design and human interaction through complex processes? Yes last i checked we do have a bunch of safety focused computer engineers who do that for a living.

That you think this is a matter of simple engineering might be the problem here. "Just maintenance/installation" is a legit error case somebody should have planed for and you thinking in terms of conspiracies has me rather worried.

edit: I wouldnt assume i could tell when a design is airworthy, maybe reconsider if you are qualified to make general statements about safe operations. The two are very much not the same.

Statistically, there is no difference between a new plane and one that's been flying for 18 years [1].

Given dying because an installer fucked up feels mighty similar to dying because a maintenance tech fucked up, I don't see a rational reason to over-penalise fabrication errors to the extent that it overrules millions of successful flight miles. (Design mistakes are categorially different.)

[1] http://awg.aero/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/analysisofimpact....

I think you are using the word "apologist" backwards.

An apologist is someone who defends something, so a Boeing apologist is a Boeing defender.

This red herring has been thoroughly refuted and discredited. It saddens me how some people keep parroting this nonsense hoping to brush off Boeing's gross negligence, specially when they resort to thinly veiled racism.

Your attempts to whitewash Boeing's negligence seems rather dishonest.

You're just restating the same thing without any actual arguments. Why do you need to be an engineer to understand safety? I don't know what magic training or experience do you think engineers get that nobody else does? And as I've already said, it looks to me that Boeing's chronic problems are leadership not technical. Get a leader in.

I think the way you criticize the article is about as faulty as the article itself.

This piece is about detailing how the 737 is an outdated design that got patched and patched till it more or less broke. The processing power is just /one/ aspect and is given as a point of reference, like the 1968 photo.

I am no expert in aviation, but I guess it's quite a safe guess that fly-by-wire systems need more processing power than mechanical/analog designs. And that a glass cockpit with a trouble database needs more than a blinking LED and a paper handbook.

Nowhere in the article does the author claim the 737 MAX crashed because it had too weak CPUs. It is, however, one indication of an obsolete design - newer jets like the A320 or the 787 have more beefy processors for a reason.

I know I worked in 1-dimensional transportation and their 486-based onboard-processors felt cramped, the software engineers had to hack around their limitations and they wished they could switch to something newer. I doubt 3-dimensional transportation is easier to implement.

I think Boeing /engineers/ would argue that statement and instead tell you that Boeing /management/ is self certifying the planes.

> But those passengers would still be alive if it weren’t for bad pilots.

Are you an experienced pilot, intimately familiar with the 737 MAX, or otherwise an aviation expert qualified to be a judge of this?

I can't see how you could make such a statement with any auhtority otherwise, and your profile does not seem to indicate you are.

I am neither, but it has also come to light that Boeing hid MCAS from airlines and pilot training materials, and even hid details from the FAA.

Together with the quick worldwide action by aviation authorities, and the prolonged grounding, even in the US, is enough make this line of reasoning very doubtful.

You think "aviation safety" means that outright criminal negligence should go unpunished? That goes against all common sense.

I think you mean any other major civilian aircraft. No recent major combat aircraft can fly at all without significant computational assistance.

This does not excuse the 737-Max shitshow in the slightest...if anything it makes it worse.

Airframe software is a totally different ballgame than airline operations management software.

When I worked on the 757 on flight critical systems (stab trim) the engineers I worked with took great pride in making the designs as good as possible. Nobody wanted to sign off on a design that they'd get a phone call on years later as being the cause of a pile of dead bodies.

I personally am proud that none of the stuff I worked on or any of the guys I knew worked on has been a factor in any incidents I've ever heard of.

This belongs in the true-but-trite category. The decision to depend on a single, unverified AofA input was not a programming error, and neither was the increase in power in the second version. These decisions were made by Boeing, and endorsed by the FAA (to the extent that Boeing informed the FAA of them.)

Really? I don't recall anyone going to prison for the 737 MAX. Not even the engineers reviewing the code written by the offshored 9$/h programmers Boeing hired...

> the HTTP standard has flaws allowing Request Smuggling

As if the building code didn't too change over time.

Then why don't you clarify things?

Read the whole sentence. Boeing does have a proven track record of serious failures, negligence, coverups... If you were inclined to speculate, you could speculate that this comment is in reference to some sort of serious issue that eventually made it into the production model. However the article doesn’t substantiate that implication (and it is only an implication).

The author of the article clearly wants you to come away from reading it with a diminished impression of Boeing. They have a clear profit incentive to make the article as outrageous as possible. A lot of people (myself included) already have a pretty poor opinion of Boeing, and I’d bet a lot of people who clicked on the article would be inclined to believe any negative claims made against them. The dangers of Fake News are often discussed on HN, and this is exactly the sort of situation where it is most important to exercise critical thinking.

That quote, without context, doesn’t reveal any meaningful information at all. I presume I’m getting downvoted because people think I’m defending Boeing, which I haven’t done once. I’m simply pointing out the danger of getting sucked in by outrage journalism, especially when it plays into your preconceived notions (no matter how well founded they are).