How Elizabeth Holmes's House of Cards Came Tumbling Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-exclusive <comment><USER2> This article shows how much the Wall Street Journal really knocked the Theranos story out of the park. It's remarkable that non of the investors or regulators paid half as much of attention.

> One of the only journalists who seemed unimpressed by this narrative was > John Carreyrou, a recalcitrant health-care reporter from The Wall Street > Journal. Carreyrou came away from The New Yorker story surprised by > Theranos's secrecy—such behavior was to be expected at a tech company but > not a medical operation. Moreover, he was also struck by Holmes's limited > ability to explain how it all worked.

Theranos also sounds similar to a cult, which may explain why her staff never figured out that they were a fake company:

> After he wrapped up, the leaders of Theranos stood before their employees > and surveyed the room. Then a chant erupted. "Fuck you . . .," employees > began yelling in unison, "Carreyrou." It began to grow louder still. "Fuck > you, Carreyrou!" Soon men and women in lab coats, and programmers in > T-shirts and jeans, joined in. They were chanting with fervor: "Fuck you, > Carreyrou!," they cried out. "Fuck you, Carreyrou! Fuck. You. Carrey-rou!"

<comment><USER3> "It's remarkable that non [sic] of the investor or regulators paid half as much of attention."

Actually, the regulators paid just as much, if not more attention to Theranos - the article itself asserts this:

> On August 25, 2015, months before the Journal story broke, three > investigators from the F.D.A. arrived, unannounced, at Theranos's > headquarters, on Page Mill Road, with two more investigators sent to the > company's blood-testing lab in Newark, California, demanding to inspect the > facilities.

According to someone close to the company, Holmes was sent into a panic, calling advisers to try to resolve the issue. At around the same time, regulators from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates laboratories, visited the labs and found major inaccuracies in the testing being done on patients. (The Newark lab was run by an employee who was criticized for insufficient laboratory experience.) C.M.S. also soon discovered that some of the tests Theranos was performing were so inaccurate that they could leave patients at risk of internal bleeding, or of stroke among those prone to blood clots. The agency found that Theranos appeared to ignore erratic results from its own quality-control checks during a six-month period last year and supplied 81 patients with questionable test results.

<comment><USER4> People need to realize their authority comes from regulating sale. They couldn't regulate the device because it was not for sale. At the point that they began selling tests, they could regulate the nanotainer because it's a consumable, essentially sold to the customer with each test. I think they were probably involved as early as they could be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Money quote:

"While Silicon Valley is responsible for some truly astounding companies, its business dealings can also replicate one big confidence game in which entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and the tech media pretend to vet one another while, in reality, functioning as cogs in a machine that is designed to not question anything—and buoy one another all along the way. ... The financial rewards speak for themselves. Silicon Valley, which is 50 square miles, has created more wealth than any place in human history. In the end, it isn't in anyone's interest to call bullshit."

</comment><comment><USER6> Overall it's an interesting article, but I have a quibble with this paragraph about how it actually backed by much Silicon Valley:

"Silicon Valley, once so taken by Holmes, has turned its back, too. Countless investors have been quick to point out that they did not invest in the company—that much of its money came from the relatively somnolent worlds of mutual funds, which often accrue the savings of pensioners and retirees; private equity; and smaller venture-capital operations on the East Coast. In the end, one of the only Valley V.C. shops that actually invested in Theranos was Draper Fisher Jurvetson."

Crunchbase shows that on top of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, there's ATA ventures in Redwood City, as well as Larry Ellison's firm (Tako) and his personal trust. Depending on how you read that, that's 4 of 6 or 3 of 5 major backers coming out of Silicon Valley. On what basis is Bilton making his claim?

<comment><USER7> Holmes and Draper were neighbors when she was growing up and his kids were childhood friends. Her dad's friend, Don Lucas was the Ellison connection. (Her parents are well connected in Washington D.C.)

ATA is ATA; I don't believe they are ever the first money into a deal (no slam on them, just FYI). So I'd say ATA is 1 for 5.

In general I don't know why they are described as the toast of SV by non-local journos (though Bilton knows the valley well) -- despite that big building on page mill they were never really that prominent IMHO especially because of their secrecy.

There's a ton to criticize about he culture of the valley but Theranos always stuck me more of a (non-Boston) east coast story that happened to be located in Palo Alto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Next: Verily? [http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/03/how-google-plans- to...](http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/03/how-google-plans-to-reinvent- healthcare.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER9> The Theranos story reminds me of an episode of "The Big Bang Theory". Sheldon gets sent to jail. Why? Why do you think, for doing the same crap he always does but this time to a judge.

Theranos followed a standard SV script, sell the vision, create a barely working product. get people to use it, iterate.

You just can't do that in a regulated space especially when you can put people's lives at risk.</comment>


How Cable Cars Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.streetcar.org/wheels-motion/cable-cars-work/ <comment><AUTHOR> > _A little tower on the southeast corner of California and Powell holds a > Muni employee who signals with lights to cable cars on both lines whose turn > it is to crest the hill. This is designed to prevent the possibility of > cable cars hitting each other at the intersection._

Here's a Street View of that tower:

[https://goo.gl/maps/MqhKBSS6EYNYNXMQ7](https://goo.gl/maps/MqhKBSS6EYNYNXMQ7)</comment>


Why the Simulation Argument is Invalid - <AUTHOR> http://www.examachine.net/blog/why-the-simulation-argument-is-invalid/ <comment><USER2> > _Rarely do I speak with such certainty. I have spoken against only dualism, > nonreductionism/creationism with such certainty in the past. However, as I > will show, this argument clearly is a form of creationism and therefore must > be dispensed with in the same forceful and rigorous manner as we treat other > forms of creationism. Unfortunately, these "arguments", purported to be > "good philosophy" by many gullible thinkers, are not respectable arguments > for a serious philosopher. Rather, they are superstitious drivel and > metaphysical nonsense redressed in scientific-sounding jargon and > mathematical-looking notation, making a mockery of both science and > philosophy, and they must be regarded as a source of embarrassment by any > intellectual worth his material._

This is mostly "rigorous hand-waving". Nothing argumentative or serious about the above "argument" (it's not even an argument -- it's mostly vague accusations of "badness").

While we might dispense with "creationism" in the biblical sense of the anti- evolution zealots, nothing in science or philosophy tells us we should dispense with all notions of "creationism" in general too, for example the Simulation Argument.

This, the way he states it, is an a priori, knee-jerk reaction, which is not scientific or philosophical at all.

> _Let us review the premises before we get to deeper mistakes and > methodological errors common with this sort of ontological argument. There > is, first of all, absolutely no reason why the first premise [civilizations > don't reach post-human stage] should not be true._

There might be no 100% certain reason why it should not be true, but sure there are signs that we're getting there ourselves, hence it has a high probability of being proven wrong in practice soon-ish. After all we have some kinds of AI, cloning, computer simulations etc already.

> _Bostrom's assumption in the paper that it is possible to create a virtual > reality prison somewhat like in the movie "The Matrix", of the entire Earth > is acceptable. Such a computer would likely require enormous resources, but > it is possible given access to stellar energy sources in the future, given > energy-efficient computers, and energy drawn from blackholes, etc._

This takes for granted OUR resources and energy needs, which would only be a criterion if we were the originating world. What about the resources of a "host" system? Those kind of energy needs could be peanuts there.

> _The suggestions in his analysis are all far off. They disregard how much > information the human brain processes and the resolution of our perceptual > and scientific apparatus, and what sort of complexity would be ultimately > distinguishable to human observers, leaving out obvious artifacts that would > show the world to be a simulation._

Human observers maybe, but why would the "inhabitants" of the simulation notice any issues? They would be conditioned/programmed not to, after all, in the same way we take for granted the Kantian a priori forms (as limitations to our perception of transcendental reality), the speed of light limit, the limits of our vision compared to the full frequency spectrum etc.

> _The obvious thing is that quantum events work everywhere, we have our > atomic microscopes and various quantum devices, and for those to work you > need a complete and consistent physical simulation_

This just tells us about the level of detail of the simulation (of which we cannot say anything in absolute terms: e.g the Plank's constant could be laughable crude unit in the "host" universe).

> _That is, Bostrom thinks such simulations will be relatively cheap. Well, > this is the second part that is troublesome. Such simulations are never > going to be too easy to program or run. Simulating quantum systems requires > a lot of computational speed and memory, that cannot be easily shrunk down > as Bostrom thinks (his first major mistake). A universal quantum computer of > that size would cost a lot of energy and space-time no matter how you design > it._

"And 640K should be enough for everybody". We simply don't know that. And even if it was true, it would only be critical if we are to assume we are a host world, and not a simulation.

But there's another issue. He says:

"One problem here is that we do not even know if constructing an enormous universal quantum computer is possible. If not, that is a big obstacle, because simulating n qubits would take asymptotically more space and time (say it might require n squared units given current quantum computing theory)."

You don't even need an "enormous universal quantum computer", given the principle of Turing completeness. You could do it with a current PC + storage + time. It would just take longer time.

Not to mention that the simulation doesn't have to simulate everything in the universe. Like Chess AI does, or more like 3D ray tracers do, it could "smartly" prune stuff that is not of importance in the current step of the simulation or is obscure by other stuff.

E.g if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to listen to it, the simulation could sidestep the sound producing routines.

The things behind us could go "un-rendered" when we don't look at them. Remote galaxies could be rendered with fewer resources, as a crude general vector of influences towards us, as opposed to at the quantum level of detail.

>* What is the numerical sense here? The laws of physics can likely be encoded in under 1000 bits. Possibly less than that but we are exaggerating for the sake of argument. In reality, we know much shorter universal codes, digital physicists claim very compact universal machines to encode the entirety of physical law, which would amount to under 100 bits. However, an intelligent design scenario, that is a world designed by an intelligent agent smarter than a human requires an initial state of at least the complexity of human brain and civilization required to get it to post-human level, which is many orders of magnitude larger than 1000 bits.*

Err, those "digital physicists" though are very close to the simulation argument, that is they argue that the universe is an automaton for example. In that case, it being an automaton inside another automaton does not require any additional complexity.

> _If we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later. > However, for that one requires evidence, for extraordinary claims require > extraordinary evidence, and Bostrom's SA fails miserably in providing such > an extraordinary evidence._

What about the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claim that "if we were in a simulation, this would be discovered sooner or later"? But what mechanism would it magically "discovered sooner or later"?

Do entities in Box2D simulations ever discover they are C++ classes? Why assume that we are that better than a hypothetical simulation environment we could be in than Box2D objects are in relation to Box2D and it's programmer?

> _SA is wrong also because it is just a theory of turtles all the way down. > It offers absolutely no valid theory of cosmology._

It doesn't have to. It can either keep our theory of cosmology, and apply it to a parent system (or consider us the starting simulation), or it can say that at some point the simulation chain breaks and there's a cosmology in action there of which we cannot really say about (but it's inhabitants might).

> _[SA is wrong also because] It doesn't answer what the age of the cosmos is, > what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution > of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth._

That's circular reasoning.

If SA is right, then it doesn't matter if our science "answers what the age of the cosmos is, what its extent is, how much energy there is, what the energy distribution of the cosmos is, how much entropy there is and so forth", because that answer would be false anyway.

I could go on, but the whole article is juvenile, filled with ad-hominem, circular reasoning and hand waving.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it looks computationally difficult to us, with what we know, to make a universe simulation. But if we're in a simulation, everything we know is a parameter of the simulation. We know nothing about the energy/computational capabilities of the simulation host system. So the main argument made here assumes the conclusion: if we're not a simulation -- our perception is accurate the 'real' limtis to computing -- then we're not in a simulation.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your process for choosing tools and tech stack? - <AUTHOR>

Ignoring cost, time required to learn - what is your process of choosing between say, half a dozen tools (could be libraries, APIs, frameworks etc) that you are considering? Do you build prototypes, or consult with someone who has used one or more of the tools before...? Especially while making big decisions like picking a mobile framework, versus less expensive ones like picking an editor. <comment><USER2> I find it hard to ignore "time required to learn". If something I'm already familiar with is adequate for the job, I'm going to go with that. I already know all of the ins-and-outs and gotchas.

Now, if there's a _compelling_ reason to go with another technology/framework, then by all means, I'm open to it. But if there's little learning cost, I stick with what's familiar.

<comment><AUTHOR> May be I should've phrased it as "assuming that the time required to learn is more or less the same", then how would you do it</comment></comment>


Show HN: Just launched our side project Precorder, new way to record iPhone vids - <AUTHOR>

@jasonrr and I just launched a side project we've been working on over weekends for the past couple months: http://airshipsoftware.com/precorder .
Precorder is a video recording app that constantly saves the past few seconds before you ever hit the record button, so you can wait until something interesting happens to start recording without worrying about missing a precious moment or winding up w/ hours of boring footage. The website explains more w/ pictures of dolphins and stuff.
This is an experiment of ours in many ways. All advice welcome. <comment><USER2> Huh. I remember hearing about a camera which did this at one point (it was a setting, I recall), so there's certainly some market for this as a feature. Not sure if it coincides with iPhones (I would find it awkward to hold one up and point it at stuff continuously), but it might.

Your website looks great, I think. You might want to move the "on sale" sticker in front of the iTunes link, though - it just looks a bit odd as it is. Replacing "Never edit your videos again" with "Never miss a scene again" or "Never miss a moment again" (a slight rephrasing of the heading for how it works) could also work better, as well as making it more obvious what the app does on first glance.

I'm sure that others will have more and better advice, though.

<comment><USER3> I agree with replacing "Never edit your videos again" with "Never miss a moment again."

On first glance, I understood the purpose of the app. But when I read "Never edit your videos again" I started to question my understanding. Made me think I missed something.

Nice job, guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> We eventually settled on "Never edit your videos again" but maybe we should switch it back.

We were closer to "Never miss a moment," but the bottom line is that you can already never miss a moment by recording the entire 2 hours of footage.

...but then you have two hours of boring footage in need of editing.

That's probably more thought than we should ask of quick readers though. We'll consider switching.

<comment><USER4> I think you're definitely over-thinking this.

The average user doesn't record all the time so they _would_ be missing all kinds of great video opportunities.

With your software, they're still not recording all the time but now they don't miss any great video opportunities.

Great page by the way. To the point and great design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, all. We're changing it.

<comment><USER5> I'd say "Precorder turns you into a better videographer." could use some work as well.

1st: "Never miss a moment." 2nd: Tell the user how/why they'll never miss a moment by using your app.

Something like "Save the 10 seconds of video before you press the button" or whatever. Get a little technical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your thumbnails of the dolphin are a cool idea... but could be done a bit better I think!

1st frame: Boring, waiting for something to happen. 2nd frame: Cool thing, but not the best part! You missed it! 3rd frame: The best part. Thanks to precorder you caught it on film.

I think that's what you're trying to do, but the second and third frames are currently the same picture. Make the second frame the tail going into the water (you missed it), the and the third the dolphin's head.

Or, a kid at a little league game: 1st: Waiting to swing 2nd: Running to 1st base 3rd: Beautiful shot of him hitting the ball.

Etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a cool idea. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.airshipsoftware.com/precorder>

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a cool idea. This is a very common feature in security camera DVRs and people love the idea once they understand it. Good job.</comment>


Lévi-Strauss, philosopher among the Indians - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/philosopher-among-the-indians/ <comment><USER2> "although Emmanuelle Loyer makes a case for Lévi-Strauss as a contemporary – and he has been canonized by the Greens – he has come to rest, rather, as a giant figure in the French cultural tradition: a monument to another time."

And you're surprised that we French have sometime a tooth against the Britons. This sentence is really poisonous. French anthropology is not of the "past glorious days and gone forever", it's still on top, for example with Philippe Descola.

<comment><USER3> One might suggest that your reading of that sentence is a bit prickly. The subject is not "French anthropology" in general, but rather Lévi-Strauss himself. Surely structuralism's heyday has passed, even within the context of French anthropology? (...and _definitely_ in other contexts)

<comment><USER2> It's in the colon, which implies a causation, an explication or something similar. Here it means, CLS is a great figure of French philosophy, _therefore_ a figure of the past.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps that would be a fair reading in French? In English one can't be so sure of such an interpretation. The sentence would still make sense if its subject were Voltaire rather than Lévi-Strauss. Being a monument to another time is simply one way for someone to be a giant figure in a cultural tradition. (Certainly, it's a clumsy sentence, but there's no indication of poisonous motivation.)

This determination to take offense via idiosyncratic hermeneutics seems so "stereotypical", one almost suspects trolling.

<comment><USER2> Why, no. It's right there, in plain text. No need for hermeneutics.

<comment><USER4> I find it hard to conclusively read the sentence as you do. Yes, there could be snark meant, but I cannot say positively that the author intends one to understand a French tradition of canonized fossils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I need to read up on why the "Indians" tag remained and persisted for centuries considering it must have not taken very long for Christopher Columbus to realize he was not in India after all. Certainly subsequent arrivals from Europe would have known it wasn't India so why did they all keep calling them that.

<comment><USER6> Building on this point, I think it feels wrong to use the unqualified _Indians_ as opposed to _American Indians_ to refer to Native Americans. Clearly the people of India are the default referent. So it is surprising to see the more confusing usage in a TLS headline.

<comment><USER7> In the past 10 years or so academic historians have switched back to using 'Indian' again.[1] For the most part, I'm told, simply because it's useful (from the perspective of prose style) to have a shorter synonym for 'Native Americans' to pull out once in awhile. But also because some indigenous groups have argued for re-appropriating the term 'Indian.' I agree that it's confusing.

[1] One example from an academic whose background is Shoshone: Ned Blackhawk, _Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West_ (2006)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought the article would be about THIS Levi Strauss :) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss)

</comment><comment><USER9> thanks for sharing this</comment>


Ask HN: What happened with video commenting? - grif-fin What stops the comment sections (on any website) to have a video commenting option?
I'm wondering where are we with this. Is it starting to get popular or is it one of those things that we have the technology but it doesn't really fit in (not enough people want to broadcast themselves as comments)?
I cannot imagine 2-5 years from now and video commenting not becoming a default in comment sections but I do not have a great reason for it and it is just a cloud of feeling and vague reasons, am I wrong and missing something here? <comment><AUTHOR> Compared to text, creating and editing and watching video is incredibly time consuming. At least if quality is any sort of concern...e.g., writing a script is a 'best practice' for producing good video content; many video edits require reshooting; and there's no good technique for skimming video while picking up the important points.

That's outside of the attraction of video to naked people.

<comment> grif-fin The point of getting it right on first recorded video is interesting but again what about people using snapchat? do they re-take? Or is it the seriousness and comments require more attention so users may be more picky...

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're not convinced, that's fine. My take is that social apps that share content on a graph are a significantly different context than publicly accessible forums such as blog comments. Maybe my mother cares about a picture of me at the beach, but probably nobody else does.

Out of curiosity, were your question and comments here typed out verbatim in one go, or were there typos and rewrites?

<comment> grif-fin I am currently on no side to be convinced from. I just simply do not know and getting others opinion.

It was in one go except this comment, why? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Who is ever going to watch video comments? I certainly would not. Most corners of the internet, this particular one being a rare exception, have comment sections that are less pleasant to enter into than an old septic tank. I don't need to see that in video form.

<comment> grif-fin But don't you think it may reduce the trolling in comments as there is a less likely hood of one knowing when his/her face is showing more responsibility comes with it?

Also wondering, do you think we will never have video commenting essentially?

<comment><USER3> You can use a mask to hide your face :), in case you are pointing the camera to your face ...

Also, video needs more bandwidth. Hosting a text comment implies storing and sending 500 bytes. A video is much much bigger and the browser support is more complicated.

<comment> grif-fin If you do hide your face then the person you are replying gets the hint that this person that kind which chooses the option of video instead of text and hides himself/herself which indicates to me not a bright fellow.

Regarding the video bandwidth, what if I say I have a product which handles the video comment hosting and your website can just integrate to it, would that help?

<comment><USER2> I think what happened with Chatroulette would be the first example of why video commenting is a terrible idea. Designed to allow people to video chat with random strangers, within days became a venue for showing your penis to random strangers.

<comment> grif-fin So are we saying due to the fear of people on Chatroulette we can no longer expand the technological tools to comment? :)

How come people on Periscope are fine?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Human Factor – the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash <comment><USER2> Recently there have been many articles and different takes on the AF447 crash. To anyone who is truly interested I would highly recommend to read the official Final Report [1] as it gives a much more nuanced and complete picture than the journalistic dramatizations and heavy handed simplification.

[1] [http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final....](http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/rapport.final.en.php)

<comment><USER3> But really, all the other interesting stuff aside (cascading errors, modal input), it really boils down to the undefensible decision by Airbus to _average inputs_ from both pilots.

<comment><USER4> No, I don't think it boils down to that. It was just a one of many different design decisions (and philosophies) that has provided a stellar safety record for Airbus planes right up to the point where it contributed to an accident.

Remember that it's easy to criticize such decisions in hindsight, but the decision was taken for a reason, and approved by government agencies at the time.

<comment><USER5> Positive exchange of control and knowing who is flying the plane is literally one of the first things you cover when learning to fly, before you even get in an airplane for the first time.

Averaging inputs in this way interferes with that in such an obvious fashion that it's really inexcusable. I really don't believe this is purely a hindsight thing. Sure, they made this decision for a reason and it was approved my government agencies at the time. However, that doesn't mean I can't think those reasons don't override the fundamental principle of always knowing who's in control of the airplane, and that the government agencies were wrong to approve it.

This crash is fairly amazing in how basic a failure it was. The two main things that went wrong (confusion over who was controlling the airplane, and not putting the nose down in a stall) are both extremely basic things. It's the computing equivalent of not checking to see if your machine is plugged in, except that people die because you forget to check.

It seems that training was deficient when it came to the basics, and I also think that the non-linked averaged controls are completely inexcusable and should be eliminated.

<comment><USER6> Or, if you're going to INSIST on doing something that's maybe not too smart (non-linked controls) there are a bunch of things you could do to fix the problem:

1\. Have a switch that determines "who is flying the airplane" i.e. which controls are active

2\. Implement some kind of feedback even if it's not direct mechanical such as moving both joysticks with a little bit of servo force: not enough to overpower one's hand but enough for the non-flying folks in the cockpit to see

3\. Have an "averaging error" sound, light up, whatever if the two joysticks have inputs which are too far from one another to make sense. This isn't great because you still have to pick one joystick to have priority and that might be non-intuitive to pilots

Ultimately I think the biggest problem with the Airbus design is that it adds an extra level of indirection between pilot's inputs and airplane course. In most aircraft if you let the controls return to "neutral" the airplane will slowly return to neutral as well. In an Airbus if you let the controls return to neutral the airplane just continues to do whatever it was you were doing; if you're climbing it continues to climb; turning it continues to turn; etc.

[http://www.apollosoftware.com/products/flybywire/flybywire_e...](http://www.apollosoftware.com/products/flybywire/flybywire_english.pdf)

It seems to me that this is how the problem occurred; someone yanked back on the joystick and nobody else noticed it and then it returned to neutral. But the airplane continued to try and hold attitude up. In a Boeing airplane that wouldn't be a few seconds of joystick back, it'd be a continuous holding of the yoke towards the pilots making it very obvious what was happening.

The pilots shouldn't have an integrator between them and the airplane because it makes the airplane handle in very non-intuitive ways to the first 80 or so years of aviation as well as basically all the smaller planes that pilots train on prior to flying big jets.

<comment><USER5> Really, I don't think there's a point to discussing ways to mitigate non- linked controls. It's basically like saying, well, _if_ you're going to keep poisonous cobras in the baby's crib, here are some ways to help avoid getting bitten....

Now, there's no reason you can't have a full fly-by-wire system with all the conveniences and safety advantages that implies along with such a system. The two controls could be mechanically linked before feeding into the system, or they could be completely mechanically independent and then use a force feedback system to link the electronically.

There are interesting arguments on both sides of the Airbus fly-by-wire system, but it's ultimately a separate question.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's a reason: Cost.

Certifying and retrofitting force feedback controls on existing Airbus planes will be very expensive, and since the current safety record is so good, it's probably not going to happen unless another accident happens attributable to the same design decision.

<comment><USER5> That's a good point, I was thinking from the perspective of designing a new system, not dealing with the large installed base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _a flight attendant walked in, asking that the temperature in the baggage hold be lowered because she was carrying some meat in her suitcase. Bonin lowered the temperature. Fifteen minutes later a flight attendant called the cockpit on the intercom to report that passengers in the back were cold. Bonin mentioned the meat in the baggage hold._

This is a bit douchy, no? Or is it common practice?

</comment><comment><USER8> So it appears that the co-pilot was very agitated and possibly having a mild panic attack, at least from the perspective of the story. On that night, it would appear that he needed to be relieved of duty and someone else handle the flying since the thunderstorm seemed to scare him and make him agitated. Had the captain flown through the storm, I bet 447 would have landed without incident.

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel like this exact same problem is going to be encountered when automatic cars are introduced. Automatic systems will be good enough to take care of 98% of situations, but in the 2% when the system is just not good enough, the humans will not fare much better, if at all. Good drivers will still exist, average drivers will remain average, while people who should never be in command of a moving vehicle will now be "driving".Only very few of them will be able to cope with truly critical situations. Of course all of that will be dismissed on the basis of automatic cars saving innumerable human lives, but I believe we will observe the exact same phenomenon.

<comment><USER5> The difference is that an automatic car that gets in over its head can just stop, presumably pulling off the road first if it's able. In this instance, instead of falling back to various alternate laws and finally crashing into the ocean, the car analog of AF447 could just pause and let the pilots figure things out at leisure.

<comment><USER9> Well, it's not too hard to imagine a situation when the computer loses control over the breaks, engine and the transmission - so it quickly realizes that in its own state it cannot bring the car to a halt. In that instance an automatic car would do what that airplane did - assume that it's own instruments are unreliable(after all, maybe the breaks work when you push the pedal, it's just a sensor that's broken), and give the control back to the driver. And then the driver would have very little time to react - as soon as the autopilot disengages the driver would have to avoid hitting other traffic, buildings or falling off a cliff. And then we arrive in the same situation as those pilots were in - an experienced driver, who had many hours of actual behind-the-wheel experience could possibly save the car and himself from an accident, avoiding obstacles long enough for the car to stop. An unexperienced driver, who has only ever "driven" automatic vehicles would lack the wisdom to avoid crashing, would most likely panic and let the car hit something. To me, the comparison is almost perfect.

<comment><USER5> A broken sensor wouldn't completely disable the brakes. It would make them less precise, but the computer could still apply braking force. You'd have multiply-redundant systems to ensure that they were always available. It would take _way_ more than just a couple of sensor failures as happened here, and that kind of massive failure only appears in really dire circumstances coupled with bad design, e.g. that DC-10 that lost all hydraulic systems when the engine exploded, because they managed to route them all past the same point.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but the computer only knows as much as its sensors tell it. If according to the sensors the breaks are not working, it doesn't matter that they defacto work - the only logical conclusion that the computer can take at that point is assume it's unable to apply breaks and relinquish command to the driver. And even multiple sensors can become broken - like here, the plane had 3 sensor pipes and they all became clogged with ice. The autopilot assumed that the values are invalid, therefore it couldn't continue functioning - and gave control back to the pilots.

Also, don't forget that you can't have redundant systems for everything, unless you want to be driving a tank. Imagine driving an automatic car and then some bird poo falls on the laser-sensor and the car literally can't see anymore(I am exaggerating, but the car can surely be blinded by something, the laser sensor on top can become dirty or damaged). The best it could do is apply full breaking force,but if you are on a motorway and there is an 18-wheeler behind you it could be a fatal idea. Again - the autopilot can't continue, it has to give control back to the driver - and the driver might crash the car if they are not experienced enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being a privat pilot myself, I was fascinated by the story of AF Flight 447 from both a human and technical point of view, since many times, a combination of these two factors would eventually lead to an unpleasant situation.

This documentary about AF Flight 447 is the best I found so far: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsgyBqlFixo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsgyBqlFixo)

...including the last words of the pilots.

<comment><USER11> After watching this this it baffles me that:

There is no (central) display indicating the current position of both control sticks.

There is no redundant system allowing the pilots to see their speed, even if the method used is inaccurate it would still be better than nothing (GPS, heated pitot tubes, ...) Same for the altimeter.

Flight recorders aren't designed to float and broadcast their position, or at least release a small beacon that would give rescue teams a general idea about where to search.

<comment><USER9> >>Flight recorders aren't designed to float and broadcast their position, or at least release a small beacon that would give rescue teams a general idea about where to search.

They are not designed to float, because there is no guarantee that the flight recorder will separate from the rest of the wreckage, but most importantly because accidents at cruise altitude are incredibly rare, it's the safest time of the flight - and you are very unlikely to be over the ocean in any other mode of flight. Even with airports close to the sea, a crash few km from the shore would not be difficult to locate.

And flight recorders have auxiliary batteries and actually broadcast their location for a month after the crash - the problem here was that no one had an idea where the plane crashed, something that's very,very improbable in its own right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > As if the buffet weren't enough of an indication, the stall warning erupted > again, alternating between STALL STALL STALL and a chirping sound.

Off topic but how does the airplane know it's stalling if the airspeed indicators are not working?

<comment><USER9> Article mentions that the aircraft also provides GPS-based speed, so maybe that's how? That's just an educated guess, I have no real idea.

Edit: Reading through the official investigation document:

"The angle of attack is the parameter that allows the stall warning to be triggered; if the angle of attack values become invalid, the warning stops. "

So like said in another comment - even with no valid speed values, the angle of attack can trigger a stall warning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and the angle of attack sensor also stops the stall warning if it reads a value above a certain threshold, discarding the value as invalid.

But apparently the airplane can still fly for a short time even at this crazily large angle. Therefore when the pilot did the right thing to reduce the angle, he triggered the stall warning again and completely got confused. I think this is a major design flaw in Airbus's system.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, even though it's suicidal, the angle of attack can physically be larger than 40 degrees, so I am not sure why would it be discarded as invalid. Most likely Airbus engineers decided that since no one would try to ascend at such ridiculous angle(especially since the autopilot will correct if the angle of attack is larger than 15 degrees), then such high values must indicate a broken sensor. A decision which contributed to the catastrophe, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't have much experience with the 330, but I assume it had some sort of stall-recovery mechanism, like a stick pusher. Why did it not override the pilots' inputs and force a pitch-down?

Also, the 330 is not equipped with pitot heaters? The military aircraft (simulators) that I've messed with will start to complain if you don't have the pitot heaters on, well before you ever leave the ground.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article: "fourth-generation jets have enabled people who probably never had the skills to begin with and should not have been in the cockpit"

To me, as an experienced pilot, that says it all.

<comment><USER15> But isn't one huge issue here also that the way the airbus flight controls are designed it made it very hard for the experienced pilots to realize the wrong inputs the 'unskilled' pilot made and essentially allowed him to silently control the plane? This seems to heavily undermine the whole purpose of having senior people on board. And to rely solely on verbal communication to coordinate the input controls seems a very fragile concept to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We can't have a discussion about the human factors in automated systems without talking about Sidney Dekker's book The Field Guide To Understand Human Error:

[http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human- Error/...](http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human- Error/dp/0754648257)

Fantastic read about the futility of placing blame on a single human in a catastrophe like this. It makes a strong case for why more automation often causes more work. Definitely worth checking out, Etsy has applied it to their engineering work by using it to facilitate blameless post mortems:

[http://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless- postmortems/](http://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/)

<comment><USER17> It's worth bearing in mind that that the accident rate is a fifth of what it was, according to the article.

The automation may have created new dangers, but it probably reduced more common errors.</comment></comment>