Is this some kind of play on Poe's Law?

There is no robot hand in the cockpit grabbing at the switches.

Actually this story is now reminding me of a time when I flew to an airport I didn't know and wasn't careful enough about my fuel... Maybe I should be telling more anecdotes about what a bad pilot I was? I have a funny story about landing backwards one time. After I was down the tower called me to ask if I had any particular reason for doing it... (And no, that is not how I lost my ticket.)

I have a long-haul flight booked on a 787 coming up in two months. I'd like to get some definitive answers.

Me too...in three. And I'm not worried one bit. Do you know why?

Because there's over a thousand of them being used by airlines every year, and hundreds flying above your head as you read this. And there's not a single report of any of them having engines that flame out.

Furthermore, I've not seen any reports today of anyone dying in a commercial airplane crash. Meanwhile, about 3,260 people die every day around the world in road vehicle accidents. If you're not afraid to get behind the wheel, stop all the fear mongering with commercial aircraft.

Or limpets with land minds? Or how about Pinocchio playing patty-cake with Putin? (Alliteration mania going for Funny?) Excuse me, but we aren't keeping up with our technologies... (Have I gotten far enough away from the AC vacuum yet?)

Small world syndrome, but I was just reading a couple of books where the topic of nuclear bombs came up. Especially interesting part where the creators of the A-bomb argued against the H-bomb as overkill. But the politicians overruled them. Of course.

Me? I think nuclear war would be bad, but not a human extinction event. Most likely that we would blast ourselves back to the stone age without sufficient remaining resources for the survivors to rebuild advanced technologies. In contrast, I think our fastest and cheapest and most likely path to fully exterminating ourselves will be a bioweapon, probably created with the support of an AI that couldn't care less about the results.

That's what Darwin would say?

Actually not a bad FP, but I was looking for the jokes. Darwin Award as low-hanging fruit, though he might not deserve one. He didn't take any of his descendants with him, and he may well have reproduced quite successfully based on this "daredevil" reputation.

Me? I am skeptical that we need more people like him. Pushing meaningless boundaries to get listed in the Guinness book is not a major contribution to human civilization. I do think we do need some boundary pushers, but that's mostly a bootstrap problem. For example, we need some people who can keep expanding the language, but many people can barely communicate in their native tongue...

Or is that just Slashdot? Anyway, the critical word is "similar" as in NOT similar at all if you look at the description. The key question would be whether or not the data they have now can distinguish between a fuel cut off caused by moving the switches and a fuel cut off triggered by "safety" software somewhere else in the plane.

I'm increasingly tilting against the pilot. Human beings are complicated and sometimes get into suicidal mind states. I'm reminded of "suicide by cop" and countermeasures, but what we might have here is "suicide by crash" and a need for countermeasures... I called it "super-suicide" before, but there should be a better term for lunatics who want to go out with the biggest bang possible.

When American companies finance their own "utopia" cities, I can't help but be reminded that the ruling class loves to design and build their own cities to protect their power and interests.

What can I say, other than let us welcome our new plutocrat overlords.

The way to do it is to drum up hype for some fantastic product or service, but disclose enough uncertainties to make it a long shot. With enough hype, enough buzzwords and slick videos, and a few big ticket celebs to endorse your launch, investors will still come. They figure it as a high risk/high reward deal, they have several on the go and hope that one or two of them will pay off to make up for all the others that fail. When your business inevitably fails, you'll have extracted enough money for yourself from it (there's several ways), and your investors will chalk it up as just another loss on something they didn;t do sufficient due diligence on.

Outright lying about your product though... that's bad enough and opens you up to prosecution. But lying about the numbers? That is a big no-no... They will come after you for that, with a vengeance.

Story seems to be a rich target, but I always fail in attempted humor...

Question: How many Microsoft employees does it take to upgrade a light bulb?

Answer: What's a light bulb?

of the worst sort.

Well, actually the story doesn't seem to have a lot of room for Funny. I could mention a recent book, but it's hard to remember the last time a book was of interest on Slashdot. I learned quite a bit about NotPetya there...

But the story came from an anonymous source. Same as FP? Don't care either way.

NAK

It was not entirely based on how academic you were, it was also based on how many places existed and were funded. There was a cap on university placements to fit within the funding. A key part of the thinking for the tutorial fees (which I am personally against, but for this post will argue its rationale for existing) was to remove that cap and have placements based on demand.

Student loans came in early 90s rather than mid - I'm from the first year ever to have them, and I gradated in 1992.

Okay, you deserve the funny, but...

Broadish reply, so an entry point for my question about uneven winds: How big before different turbine blades are in zones with different wind speeds or directions and how would that affect power production?

[I often pose questions with the intention of clarifying what to search for, but not so much this time...]