Target missed.

What could possibly go wrong?

That's the joke I was looking for and also the subject of The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher. The short answers mostly involve dead humans, though the book says YouTube is actually more harmful than Facebook or the cesspool formerly known as Twitter.

I actually had another long session with DeepSeek yesterday trying to figure out some configuration problems on a Linux box. It managed to be somewhat educational, but stupid. Didn't actually solve the problem after quite a long effort involving several approaches, so I'm thinking about trying again with a competing AI, probably ChatGPT, to see how that goes.

My tentative conclusion at this stage is that a real expert would have asked some key questions that DeepSeek never got around to asking. It only kept hinting about possible problems with something the maker of the hardware (Apple) does, but an actual expert would have pinned that down first and been able to select the best approach to focus on rather than long lists of possible approaches with confabulated explanations (that always sound so plausible).

Interesting observation that as I was checking a fact using the evil google's AI it became clear that DeepSeek data was being buried. But perhaps it's just a feature of competing AIs buying ad space above the real websearch results?

About the future... I'm getting there, too. I went through a bleak period, then into a period of "but the average is up", and now I'm into "the oscillations may be fatal". Related reading is The End is Always Near by Dan Carlin. (Possibly with the help of an unnamed and uncredited AI?) Fluffy pseudo-academic style. Trying to sound like a pedant rather than an influencer?

There actually was some new information published since the last time the story was featured on Slashdot. Not surprised at the vacuous Slashdot reaction, however. Perhaps more significant that I don't feel like the quality of discussion on Slashdot these days merits the effort to dig up the link.

So as a memory exercise, I'll just summarize what I can recall. It was an article written by someone closely linked to the airline involved. Retired executive? Possibly also a former pilot? Quite familiar with normal cockpit procedures. Most significant parts pointed pretty strongly at the pilot rather than the copilot as the bad actor. The pilot had some medical problems and it seems probable that he knew they were serious, perhaps so serious that he would be forced into retirement soon. The SOP for this situation would have had the copilot holding his yoke while the pilot watched for problems, which left the pilot in the starting position with free hands to cut off the fuel.

In my previous comment I suggested the guilty party could have tried to confuse the issue of who did what by asking first (for the benefit of the voice recorder), but now I think it's pretty clear what happened. However the shocking part of the article involved the airline's policy regarding the mental health of their pilots combined with unreasonable working conditions. Almost like they're trying to drive them crazy but don't want to know about it?

So let's see if anyone comes up with a Funny angle for the story. I sure can't see it. Seating advice? "Be sure to reserve seat 11A since it might be a lucky seat" or "Be sure to avoid seat 11A since good lightning never strikes the same seat twice."

Needs to be quoted against the troll censors? Have I managed to hurt the feelings of the conspiracy buffoons?

NAK

I eagerly await the follow up articles on the whereabouts of DB Cooper and the identity of Jack the Ripper.

When you're trying to rationalize irrational behavior... Down the rabbit hole we might go...

The MH370 investigation basically dead-ended against the pilot's background. Too soon to say in this case. In my initial reaction to this story, I put super-suicide first as a motive, but what if it was primarily murder? I don't think either of the pilot's could have been a Qanonatic, but one of them could have gotten an encrypted message that "the enemy" is going to be on board "your flight" on that day...

And of course there's always the possibility of life insurance fraud, eh?

But I'm still tilting to the suicide theory and hoping that the background checks will find the reasons for the insanity of suicide. Which got me to wonder about the timing in the cockpit... After cutting the fuel was he trying to aim the plane at the biggest building? Perhaps using the other pilot's yoke to muddle things even more? Maybe we need to aid a video recorder black box to the voice recorder black box?

Citation of a YouTube video negates your credibility. Also casts aspersions on your reading ability, so it also seems like a waste of time to suggest you read my comment more carefully or thoughtfully. But you can just dismiss it as due to my poor writing. Always a great proof.

Heck, I can't even remember where the fuel switches were on the planes I flew in my youth...

No, I did NOT elect the YOB and your reply didn't even seem to be following the AC's line of BS. I'm not saying that your reply was thoughtless, but I think your thinking didn't survive clearly enough for me to figure it out. Attribute it to my stupidity. As you like.

I think the election actually came down to about 20% of the suckers being fooled on Election Day, though The Chaos Machine argues for more serious problems. My review of the book was poorly thought out, so I can't defend that perspective... So returning to simple demographics, quite a bit of the research says that about 30% of most populations (as assessed in many countries) really do hate freedom. They are "authoritarian followers" who really prefer to be told what to do and think. Usually they are scattered around and "mostly harmless", but the YOB has managed to get them all unified behind his 'great and fearless' 'leadership'. (First scare quotes for Rocky and Bullwinkle and second for the puppet factor.) It's actually oversimplification to say 20% for the balance of those votes, but I'm nodding to the Lincoln quote about fooling people that Lincoln never said, but I can't recall the word for that category of confusion...

I posted something similar, but I called it super-suicide...

FP was going for Funny (and didn't get there), and then you went for serious, but under the FP Subject, so your point is confused...

On the current evidence I think it was pretty likely a super-suicide. Killing himself and taking a bunch of people along with him. Not as interesting as MH370, but that's the next thing I'm going to look for in the discussion. My initial reaction is that it is more likely to be the older pilot, perhaps facing imminent retirement, but it could be the younger pilot. Actually whichever one did it, there are serious mental problems involved.

Okay, so if he's crazy, was he also stupid? Based on the reported conversation, we may never know. The pilot asking the question could have been the same one who just cut off the fuel and the negative response from the innocent pilot was the simple truth. Or the other pilot was innocently asking the question because he was confused and in this case the response was the guilty lie.

If there are any jokes on this story, the humor is going to be of an exceedingly dark flavor.

And now needs to be quoted for the censor troll mods.

Hmm... Probably a good topic to stay away from, but I've thought about it quite a bit.

Ma Nature has a different idea. Her focus is on stability and equilibrium, but the genes are shuffled at random. When you do the math, that means that maintaining the population equilibrium calls for each pair of parents to have four children so the two children who draw the least favorable genes can die before reproducing. Extra kids are okay--as long as most of them die. Only in weird and transient situations are species allowed to get away from those numbers, and only for brief periods. Don't forget that Ma Nature's clock is set on geological time.

But human parents don't like seeing ANY of their children die. Funny joke, but that's also a Ma Nature thing. Human children are so helpless that we have to love them that much or NONE of them would survive long enough to reproduce.

There's a joke in here somewhere, but I'm not laughing. And I bet the Funny tab is as empty as usual...