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Comment Re:It seemed like a good idea (Score 1) 94

Will to be fair if it had been 3d printed out of Peak or a number of other engineering filaments then no it wouldn't. Believe it or not there are consumer printers that can print this high temperature filaments. Obviously be didn't use over of them. In less critical applications people have been 3d printing and air box parts for cars for years. And no they don't melt either. Engines usually run well below 270 C. But this is not an airplane obviously.

Comment Re:Zig (Score 1) 68

It's been around for quite a while. It's seems to be a replacement for C and C++. Some see it as an alternative to Rust, but it doesn't have the same safety features. I would love to find a language that's a replacement for C++ that can be used to migrated existing code bases to, but none of them are, really. That's partly C++'s fault. It's very hard to interoperate with C++ code and libraries from other languages, without layers of wrappers (PySide comes to mind for Qt). Even interop between different C++ compilers is difficult. So for now I stick with C++.

Comment Re:Anomalies are a learning experience (Score 1) 91

New Glenn booster can also glide a bit during descent, not unlike the Starship. The strakes on the rocket create a tiny bit of lift, so it has a more flexible landing envelope than the mostly ballistic descent of the Falcon 9. I was very impressed by what New Glenn did on its first successful landing.

Comment Can AI overcome GOP gerrymandering? (Score 0) 110

Every week I read about yet another GOP-controlled state legislature redrawing the boundaries to eliminate districts that might vote for a party other than the GOP in time for the midterms. Indiana is the latest state to do this. I don't see AI overcoming this. It's truly interesting that this widespread, coordinated effort to eliminate democratic seats with a map is hardly a blip in the news media. They are talking about the dems taking back congressional power in the midterms but frankly it's not going to happen.

Several democrat states are responding in kind now, although in their cases they are moving forward with a veneer of legitimacy through referendums. The GOP states could certainly do this but for whatever reason they choose not to. Something about democracy doesn't sit well with them even when it favors them. Still with democrat states gerrymandering away a few GOP seats, it's not enough to counter what these other GOP states are doing in my opinion.

Sadly the cancer of gerrymandering is working its way north. It's already been done here in Alberta to try to weaken the power of the cities vs the conservative rural base.

Comment Re:Directly monitored switches? (Score 1) 54

Obviously the black box can only record what the computer tells it is the state of the switches. There's no camera looking at the switches to confirm they actually were moved. No doubt the switches are wired such that a short or an open circuit will not fool the computer into thinking the switch was moved and shut the engines down. But if something caused the computer to think (pardon the expression) the switches had changed state, it would shut the engines down and the flight recorder would dutifully record this change of state.

Suppose for a moment a computer glitch did shut the engines down. The pilot, upon noticing this asks the copilot about it and he says, no I didn't shut them down. Knowing he has to do something, reaches over, flips them to off and back to on again to try to get them going again, after which the engines did restart but sadly not in time to prevent disaster.

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 0) 54

Mods, this should not have been rated -1 flamebait! Totally inappropriate mod.

I deeply respect Captain Steeeve and his videos are great. Any nervous flyer should watch his videos (except the Air India ones!). And indeed Captain Steeeve's summary of the report is accurate. And his videos about the cutoff switches are accurate too. The chance of those switches being flipped inadvertently or on their own from mechanical wear and vibration is zero. And indeed the computer shows that inputs from those switches went from on to off and back to on again with timing suggestive of human intervention.

That said, one of Captain Steeeve's youtube collaborators, Garybpilot with whom he has done videos about Air India (Hanger Talk) has done his own videos on Air India. In one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0n3iIjvQk8) he mentioned that at Air India, there is not one pilot who believes the official report blaming the pilots. These are pilots who knew well both of the pilots in the cockpit on that tragic flight and find the suggestion difficult to believe. The Indian investigation board has been mired in political intrigue and controversy the whole time (before even). They were definitely under pressure to exonerate Air India and blame the pilots. Also to exonerate Boeing. Not that long ago a 787 had both engines shut down during landing. And there is a minor history of electrical anomalies on 787s, including RATs deploying mid flight for no discernible reason.

If the pilots did not shut the engines down, I don't think we will ever know what actually happened unless there is another accident. And given the problems Boeing has had in recent years (and other planes with engine shutdowns during flight), another accident is a possibility.

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 1) 54

Those words were said, definitely. and the other guy responded, "I did not."

I don't know anything about what conspiracy theories are going around on the Internet, but I do know there among some professional pilots there is skepticism. There are no pilots at Air India who knew well these two pilots who believe they were simply suicidal. Plus there was at least one other incident this year with a 787 where both engines shut down during landing. The investigation has certainly been fraught with political tension. Obviously it's in Air India and Boeing's best interests to blame the pilots.

Comment Re:AI is just limited. (Score 2) 120

I find the various LLMs are helpful as a form of search engine, enabling me to drill down to potentially useful information more quickly. However at the same time they are far worse than a search engine because they aren't able to actually give you the sources to check. When ChatGPT generates a chunk of code, if you ask it where it got it from, it will say it didn't get it from a specific site, it just knows this stuff. Which of course ends up wrong half the time. So you end up with wrong stuff confidently passed off as accurate, which is ultimately stolen from real human sources. When I was in uni it was drilled into me to list my sources. Why should LLMs be held to any different standard? Google's AI summary does show sources, at least few, which is good. I always check them.

Even Claude AI which is supposed to be geared towards coding suffers from these same problems. I am trying to do some esoteric Qt 6 programming involving OpenGL, and all the AIs really struggle here because there's a limited amount of source material to steal from. It's certainly not capable of digesting the API documents and synthesizing code to do something without first seeing someone else's code. Claude AI seems to work best if you use a popular library or framework with lots of online discussion and github code for it. The popular languages and frameworks of the day.

Comment Re:Make more (Score 1) 24

Make more what? Dragon capsules? Currently SpaceX has no plans to make any more dragons beyond the five they currently have. I believe the fifth capsule had its inaugural flight this year with the private Axiom-4 excursion. These dragon capsules are currently rated for just five flights each, but SpaceX and NASA are working to extend their certifications to 15 flights each. Currently the contract with SpaceX does not include additional missions that would have been flown by Boeing. While it's possible NASA could try to buy some more flights, I don't think they will. SpaceX has the falcon 9 pretty well booked, and their other resources are fixed on Starship. I'm not saying NASA "needs" the Starliner, though. Just that it's not a simple thing to substitute Dragon for Starliner.

Comment Re:Europe exported it's polluting industry (Score 1) 99

There is also the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in California.

It has been opened and closed several times as the Feds and state of California tussle over it.

California greenies want it closed. The Feds want it to operate, even at a loss, for supply chain security.

It is currently operating with DoD subsidies, but production needs to be ramped up.

Comment Re:Competition (Score 4, Interesting) 99

Well it's a problem or the US too. The last bastion of American industry is heavy equipment including construction and agricultural machines. Interestingly this is also a prime industry for Europe too. A lot of stuff is still made locally. But China is now making their own versions and just beginning to exporting them. And it's a double whammy. They can make them cheaper, but choose to just barely undercut western equivalent products (say by 20%), making a huge profit.

Comment Re:Europe is discovering what Canada discovered (Score 4, Insightful) 99

Except that in the case of Canada, there was a great deal of trade in both directions, in terms of commodities and also finished goods. It was a mutually beneficial trade arrangement too. It promoted the US' interests without ham-fisted authoritarian threats. This sort of trade made the US the powerhouse it was. In other words this was a sharp shift in US government attitude from one of friendship to one of an adversary (which is really how all relationships and business deals have ever been done in Trump's life). Sadly there's no going back. The damage is done and the US will never ever recover the good will and trade benefits it once had with its closest allies and trading partners, no matter what a future Democrat does to try to undo the damage, now that Trump's attitude has become the attitude of the GOP.

With China, though, there was no abrupt shift. China's goals have always been clear. The only thing they want from the west in terms of trade is raw commodities and foreign currencies. Whereas the west demands cheap goods, full stop. So China's domination of European industry and economies has been ongoing for years, and it's benefited by European policy and attitudes. China is happy to build high quality items and sell them for a premium, but there's no very little demand from the west. If there was demand, we wouldn't have seen local manufacturing capability disappear in the first place. Tariffs are not going to change these fact.

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