Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 Max Replacement
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Boeing has started working on a replacement for the 737 MAX, but the discussion is dominated by concerns over the company's safety record, corporate culture, and ability to design and build a reliable aircraft.
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Does that mean it's not trying to be "another 737" but actually a truely new type?
https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/civil-aero...
The 737 MAX is powered by CFM LEAP which has about 30k pounds of thrust each.
https://www.cfmaeroengines.com/leap
It's definitely a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" thing, but I ask myself a similar question: at some point whoever is producing these chips is going to stop finding it worthwhile and end production, no?
But then I also assume the people who work on these things know arguably infinitely more than I do.
And if the companies who produce these chips continue to make a healthy profit, why would they stop?
Presumably, they have "guaranteed" buyers but also, if so, why would Airbus have issues sourcing CPUs, for example?
Not if the price of those units are really high.
Anything should have a replacement budget and timeline attached.
All I know from having worked in an Airbus subsidiary for a couple of years is that their world is nothing like mine.
If the chips are cheap and easily available, and you know their failure modes, and they've been field tested for decades, why change?
It's very different from many software development attitudes, but remember that airframe manufacturers and avionics companies employ many people just to calculate risk and failure rates. The failure rates of these things are critical to the safety of your airframe.
There's a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets. The former group has no work to do, after all, so why should the company keep them around? But then if the market ecosystem shifts, and a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company.
Steve Jobs spoke eloquently about this phenomena in an old interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA
MBAs and final-gasp lawyers concentrate on making the reported number go up in the short term, they won't take a hit now for a payoff in ten years.
Also the 707 tail was extended by 40ft to give it better minimum ground speed control, this was retroactively applied to already built planes. Very interesting to see how this was applied in the past with a lawyer at the helm vs the current ceo during the launch of the 737Max
Adding 12 meters to an aircraft is quite a big change.
Although the Wikipedia article cites the UK ARB as the influence, it was also in response to the 1959 crash [1] of a 707 being used for training, in which Dutch roll was induced and later became so violent it ripped 3 engines off the wings.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707#707-420
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_Washington_Boeing_707_cra...
Both the 707 and 747 were "bet the company" projects, in particular the 747 pushed Boeing to the brink of bankruptcy. However both were major successes because they took a gamble on the future of the aviation industry.
In these days of "fiduciary responsibility" it's difficult to imagine any public company taking that kind of risk. Risk is what should make returns.
It means, when you see a sign that says an exception, "no parking Wednesdays between 8 and 12", it proves the rule that parking is allowed otherwise.
The exception of a lawyer being a good CEO does not, in any way, prove that lawyers are not good CEOs .
The idea that there was some point in history were the pointer target was officially designated to be x is just false. That point in time never existed.
[All] lawyers are bad CEOs is a statement that was made. Evidence to the contrary was presented. "The exception proves the rule" was used to dismiss that evidence.
It's used in a similar way as "God works in mysterious ways".
The examples of legal signs and so on are a more specific, technical, meaning that is only used in certain contexts, such as actual legal proceedings or at least informal discussions about laws or contract terms.
When /u/flkiwi above said this phrase, they obviously meant it in the joking sense I gave, and which they had actually explained above. They agree that, in general, lawyers make bad CEOs, but they also personally know of exceptions. This is not "wrong usage", as proven by the fact that everyone who read the comment understood exactly what they meant.
This whole thing reminds me of the people who complain about the use of literally as an amplifier instead of for its primary meaning as "wrong", with seemingly no understanding of how flourishes and rhetoric work (nor even of the history of words like "very", which used to be quite similar to "literally" a long time ago).
Similarly an exception like a lawyer being a good ceo does not prove a rule like lawyers are bad CEOs. It's nonsense. People who don't understand the proverb took it and misused it and then others took after them and here we are, I've been wondering about that proverb my entire life and I never understood how it makes any sense. Now I finally do, and I'm glad the other commenter clarified it
If you research this, as well as the customer as always right as you claim, you will find no evidence of their longer ‘original’ forms [1].
[1] https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-ri...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
There’s some quibbling to be had about the meaning, but it puts it closer to “assume good faith” or something like that, rather than reducing it to just preferences.
> The earliest known printed mention of the phrase is a September 1905 article in the Boston Globe about Field, which describes him as "broadly speaking" adhering to the theory that "the customer is always right".
> However, John William Tebbel was of the opinion that Field never himself actually said such a thing, because he was "no master of idiom". Tebbel rather believed it probable that what Field would have actually said was "Assume the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question that he is not."
I don't dispute that people use it that way but it's objectively a misuse. The phrase's misuse implies that evidence against a statement supports the statement.
> In many uses of the phrase, however, the existence of an exception is taken to more definitively 'prove' a rule to which the exception does not fit.
> In what Fowler describes as the "most objectionable" variation of the phrase,[1] this sort of use comes closest to meaning "there is an exception to every rule", or even that the presence of an exception makes a rule more true; these uses Fowler attributes to misunderstanding.
Try to understand that there is no individual ownership over turns of phrase, and that they tend to shift around over time. Bugs Bunny turned Nimrod from a byword for a competent hunter into an insult.
This is natural and all of your favorite words have or will be subject to it as long as there are humans to communicate with them.
Btw, let me add my personal pet peeve: "egregiously" somehow went from meaning "very good" to mean "very bad" in American English.
In my native language "egregiamente" still has the original meaning so I was confused for a long time.
The original meaning of 'prove' was more like 'test'. The original sense was therefore opposite to this.
Imagine you got a parking ticket on Tuesday. What would your defense in court be?
the rule is that the parking is allowed; the exception is that it's not allowed on Wednesdays; they didn't bother spelling out "parking is allowed at all other times except"
Read for what was intended by the author and you’ll learn more.
> That's weird because this one was good
> Ah an exception to the rule. That proves it, lawyers are bad CEOs!
Is that not what was intended by the author?
I don't really care but but when I found out the actual meaning of the phrase (the usage of which never really made sense to me), it made a lot more sense to me. I thought it was interesting.
I'd also argue that "it's harmless" is not always accurate. It's usage dismisses counter-evidence to a statement. Depending on the case, it may or may not be harmless.
If a company is dying (aka winding down), you most likely do in fact want a lawyer in charge, whatever their job title may be. For instance why would you put a scientist or engineer in charge of negotiating your acquisition?
It's a great proverb and in particular the "accountants in charge to extract maximum value after maturity, lawyers in charge at the end to wind it down or sell it off" part is accurate of many businesses in general. No company gets to live in the startup and growth stages forever. At a certain point shareholders decide to get everything they can out of their investment and move on.
Just as there are good engineers, there are also bad ones. Same for every profession.
I guess the question is: can Boeing really design a new plane where cost cutting, regulation interpretation and skirting, and greed are _not_ the driving factors?
It feels like what Boeing is saving from all the nickel-and-dime it does on everything it ends up paying lawyers, fines and damages. I wonder how they manage to see this as good business. Or maybe they hope that "the next" time they'll score big without any penalties?
And yes professions have stereotypical personalities. Like the used car salesman.
It’s like they knew they were dying even before Apple delivered the actual blow.
It did support touch, with a stylus built in - I forget if the stylus was needed or if you could use your bare fingers.
But Symbian didn't have any roots in Linux. It came from the Psion organiser line originally (and specifically the 5/7 series, not the earlier 3's).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X
Nokia already had Android phones released months before the Microsoft acquisition closed. Makes me wonder if Nokia would have pulled out completely from making Windows phones had Microsoft not purchased them.
Even Microsoft changed their tune, releasing Android phones themselves years later under the Surface brand.
Damn, I really miss the N900. I was seriously using it as recently as about 4-5 years ago.
Even today it looks better than any of the major mobile OSs, is more responsive and just _feels_ better to hold and use.
The road not taken.
When you look at where most Nokia customers defected to, it is Samsung and Android.
An ethical person with that knowledge, whether they be an engineer, lawyer, or a circus clown, would have fought tooth and nail to ensure the aircraft was grounded.
I am much more interested in the ethics of any particular leader, than their credentials.
The first crash was already too late for them. A team that behaved so callously earlier wasn't going to stop at that point without an external intervention. They were in fact attempting to scapegoat the pilots even after the second crash. Therefore, putting the blame on one CEO at the time of the first crash is illogical. The blame must fall on the team that established such an unbelievably flawed safety culture in the first place. Who was that? And why?
I'm not insisting that accountants and lawyers are unfit for top management. There are corporate portfolios that they're the best fit for - like accounting and law firms. Then there are the exceptions who do a sensible job even outside their portfolio. But I have seen both engineering heavy and accounting heavy managements. As expected, their priorities and operational philosophies are drastically different. But their influence doesn't end there. They also define the wider company culture - A culture that not even a CEO can change without significant personal effort against institutional inertia.
So, accountants or lawyers may be sufficient to lead IT companies. But if they choose to lead an industry where so many lives are at stake, they better hold back their profit-seeking instincts and understand the safety culture and the consequences of their decisions damn well.
You would think by now that HN would understand that there is a difference between the accountants and the finance guys. The greatest con that Finance achieved is convincing everyone that the accountants were to blame for everything finance did. But the accountants just handle the transactional details. They don't make the financial decisions.
And generally a dying company should have a lawyer in charge because their mandate is to try to negotiate selling off the company or its assets, or to run it through bankruptcy.
It's not just building a product end-to-end. Tim Cook is a supply-chain guy. He knows how to build a product. What he doesn't know how is how to design a new one. This is the reason that all of the "new" stuff that has come out of Apple since Cook took over is actually just riffs on old degrees of freedom: thinner phones. New colors. Different UI skins. The only thing I can think of that Apple has done in the Cook era that was actually new was the Apple Vision Pro. That was really cool, but it was a commercial disaster, the modern equivalent of the Lisa or the NeXT.
Jobs took Lisa and NeXT failures and turned them into the Mac and OS/X. There is no hint that Apple intends to do anything with the Vision Pro, and they've already been scooped by Meta.
I am seeing them everywhere, around here.
I suspect that quite a few are SEs and maybe last year's model, but I do see a lot of Ultras.
AR does seem to be a potential big deal. But the tech and implementation probably has a ways to go before it's interesting outside of a bubble audience.
The Apple Watch to me just seems like a worse earbud. If I want to be that interrupted in tge middle of something might as well hear the thing and not have to look at it.
The Watch has helped me lose 30 pounds, has significantly helped motivate me to exercise more, and has let me keep my phone on silent mode for at least 5 years now. For me, it’s a great device.
Also, I expect Vision to eventually be a massive success.
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/05/12/0256259/why-airpod...
Not everyone is careless with their things. On the aspect of battery replacement, i agree it’s a shame.
I expect that's exactly what they have in mind. If they're successful, Meta's project will be to Apple's what early MP3 players were to the original iPod.
The jury is out on whether Cook can pull it off.
The main hurdle Apple faces is bringing costs down and improving the AVP's form factor, both of which are well within their capabilities.
Hint: being able to grab a well balanced headset that is so easy to put on as a cap. This makes you not think if you are going to watch or play in VR, you just do it.
It doesn't really describe the companies' different abilities but the design goals. The quest 2 was clearly 'make it as cheap as possible so lots of people can buy it' and the AVP's was 'make it as good as it can be, price is not a factor'
Still though, both products eventually get stuck at the same point: a killer usecase. Neither has a compelling reason to actually want to put it on. There's very few things that are better in VR and the ones that are are really niche. I personally love VR gaming and stimulations. I love VR for it and I use it a ton. But those are pretty niche.
But socialising in VR is not really a great user experience despite most of meta's focus going there. And Apple? They don't really have any usecase that shines. Maybe watching movies but even that works better on an actual TV as you can share the experience with others.
In fact the speed of innovation is, pretty much, equal to the speed of maintenance. Nothing gets maintained, it’s either new or collapsing, but no-one enjoys the middle part. Which is sad. It’s a form of inflation.
Boeing is perfectly right to design a new plane right now. Engineers who interned on the 787 have bought a house on the countryside a few years ago.
Businesses kill themselves all the time from the loss of institutional knowledge. We see stuff like "government spends X a year paying people Y to build almost no product Z". Instead, we're paying people Y to be ready to build Z when something goes terribly wrong like war.
So Uber wasn't a business for its first 14 years? There are more objectives a business can have than maximize immediate profit. There are other metrics it can try and move.
Government does not really have that. All their businesses have 100% market share so to run it profitable, they would have to stop doing unprofitable thing. Like providing healthcare to poor people or delivering from Hawaii to some rural area.
It's even the only interpretation of that phrase that makes sense, because if you take the optimizing into large risks interpretation away, there's no other way those two can act in similar ways.
It wasn't a particularly huge cost, and before Harry Stonechisler took over there was money for that type of work within a profitable BCAG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
How much are you or your enterprise willing to pay for that?
See, the economics just don't make sense. Give me some VC money, a small team of experts in the domain and some runway and I'll give you a self-hosted alternative to Jira.
But the cost for you would be too high and I will go out of business trying to sell software while everyone else is renting it out.
Instead, the most important innovation are the ones that reduce maintenance needs.
Automating farms, moving mechanical computation into general purpose processors, simplifying science theories so that people can learn in a semester stuff that took decades to mature... All of those have a tremendous impact. All of those speed everything up, and make room for more innovation to appear.
Because the Software Update page under System Settings is all that normies will ever read and so what's in the text there is focused on normies.
Meanwhile techies may be interest in the CVEs listed in the security update list:
* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/125111
* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/100100
* https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...
And corporate IT types may be interest in enterprise features, like TLS behavioural changes:
* https://support.apple.com/en-ca/121011
And right now as well, no laptop comes close to the overall experience that the Mac provides so he has been able to maintain market leadership.
Far better than Zuck for whom the only source of innovation has been acquisitions rather than releasing original products.
Fair point.
Grab one when they go on sale, and keep it in the box for a couple of decades.
Have you seen what Lisas go for at auction these days?
AirPods and the Apple Watch are also major new product lines, by some accounts each alone bigger than many major technology firms, that were released in the Tim Cook era of Apple.
I kind of feel like people gloss over the seismic shift in computing power Apple silicon designs have ushered in. It seems like a lot of people on HN think of building these chips as almost an afterthought if they think of building them at all. Which is ludicrous.
It's the chips that make the new innovative products possible, not vice versa. You literally can't innovate, until you have the compute working at the power profile that you need. Only then can you build anything groundbreaking.
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