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> Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other reasons. The entire interest in the 370 is purely entertainment. Missing planes,

> Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other reasons. The entire interest in the 370 is purely entertainment. Missing planes, who's occupants are dead and we can learn nothing from are much more interesting than poor African kids, who are yet to, but will die of simple stoppable issues. If someone faked this picture it's no more sick than this original interest. (And also unlikely, it's a boring punk)

BillinghamJ 11y ago
Actually the main reason that we're striving to find this plane is so that we can find out what exactly happened, in order to ensure it won't happen again to the other planes. FAA regulations are written in blood.
reitanqild 11y ago
While I see your point I guess I should refer you to the guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html A lot of us find plane crashes are interesting for the same reasons that we read or watched detective stories etc at some point, only plane crashes and other real world events are far more interesting to me at least. That doesn't mean we don't care about Africa. Some of us do and it might be helpful for you to know that to mea at least you come off as judging and not as someone I'd like to work with on those matters.
dzhiurgis 11y ago
> much more interesting than poor African kids But that applies to anything that is not directly related to poor African kids, doesn't it? You are not going to solve hunger by pouring ship fuel and airplane engineers into the pastures of Africa anyways. I agree that MH370 story is entertaining though.
ekianjo 11y ago
So when you eat breakfast lunch and dinner do you spend 1 hour feeling sick to your stomach about all poor people suffering on Earth or do you have peace of mind like most of us do?
Arnt 11y ago
As a software developer, I really appreciate the work the airlines and authorities put in after each accident. I've read a couple of reports. Quite apart from the issue of saving people's lives, it's good to see the work of someone who someone takes bugs seriously. They never seem to say "let's see if it happens again", "maybe it was a one-off, let's reboot" or "let's upgrade, maybe it's fixed in the latest version". The report I read most recently described a chain of seven mistakes and other problems, described which ones combined and how, discussed how each of the seven could be prevented and/or made less likely, whether each of the actions was likely to be a net improvement, and finally made recommendations. IMO, those of us who work with bugs should read one of those reports every so often, just to see/remind us how an unlimited-resources, all-dials-at-11 incident post mortem looks.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Heh. People take post-mortems seriously when they become literal...
- diskcat 11y ago
  My question is why is it that this level of diligence is applied to the civil aviation industry, and not to something like cars and buses which kill way more people per distance travelled. My guess would be it's because people like to blame somebody else. If it's a plane then there are large organisations to blame i.e. the airline and the manufacturer. While with cars almost always the blame is with the driver i.e. the people. When it's a manufacturer's fault however nobody bats an eye if they have to recall 500,000 cars to install something that would decrease the risk by 1/10th the amount if everybody uses seatbelts.
  - cstross 11y ago
    Aviation industry accident investigation practices were adopted from the railway industry. Back in the mid-to-late 19th century, train accidents killed about as many travellers per capita as road traffic accidents in the 1950s. So the industry adopted a set of principles: no-blame impartial accident enquiries managed by an independent board who would deliver a report on the causes of the accident along with recommendations for best practice to avoid it recurring. Upshot: rail passenger travel is now by far the safest form of land travel. Bear in mind that a Boeing 777 like the one that went missing on flight MH370 costs on the order of $200M. You then have potential liability for the passengers (if the airline made culpable/criminal mistakes) of maybe $2-4M per head, for up to 400 pax on a 777 -- they're big (MH370 had only 239 people on board) and you're looking at a billion dollar accident. The airlines and manufacturers thus have a huge incentive not to let this happen again. (Compare to a car accident: 90% or thereabouts are down to human error, and the vast majority of fatal ones "only" involve a couple of deaths, capping the potential liability two orders of magnitude lower.)
melling 11y ago
You are understating the need so solve the mystery. The black box is out there somewhere. If enough debris is found maybe it will help investigators calculate the origin of the crash. That thing where you're trying to shame people because they have interest in one thing while there's some horrible problem in the world needs to be solved, is a bit of an old troll. "We're curing erectile dysfunction while people are dying of other diseases. What's wrong with you people?" We should give this troll a name.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  My first idea is a variation of all-or-nothing: if you cannot get rid of all X now - tjen you shouldn't even start thinking about it.

BillinghamJ 11y ago

Actually the main reason that we're striving to find this plane is so that we can find out what exactly happened, in order to ensure it won't happen again to the other planes. FAA regulations are written in blood.

reitanqild 11y ago

While I see your point I guess I should refer you to the guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html A lot of us find plane crashes are interesting for the same reasons that we read or watched detective stories etc at some point, only plane crashes and other real world events are far more interesting to me at least. That doesn't mean we don't care about Africa. Some of us do and it might be helpful for you to know that to mea at least you come off as judging and not as someone I'd like to work with on those matters.

dzhiurgis 11y ago

> much more interesting than poor African kids But that applies to anything that is not directly related to poor African kids, doesn't it? You are not going to solve hunger by pouring ship fuel and airplane engineers into the pastures of Africa anyways. I agree that MH370 story is entertaining though.

ekianjo 11y ago

So when you eat breakfast lunch and dinner do you spend 1 hour feeling sick to your stomach about all poor people suffering on Earth or do you have peace of mind like most of us do?

Arnt 11y ago

As a software developer, I really appreciate the work the airlines and authorities put in after each accident. I've read a couple of reports. Quite apart from the issue of saving people's lives, it's good to see the work of someone who someone takes bugs seriously. They never seem to say "let's see if it happens again", "maybe it was a one-off, let's reboot" or "let's upgrade, maybe it's fixed in the latest version". The report I read most recently described a chain of seven mistakes and other problems, described which ones combined and how, discussed how each of the seven could be prevented and/or made less likely, whether each of the actions was likely to be a net improvement, and finally made recommendations. IMO, those of us who work with bugs should read one of those reports every so often, just to see/remind us how an unlimited-resources, all-dials-at-11 incident post mortem looks.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Heh. People take post-mortems seriously when they become literal...
diskcat 11y ago
My question is why is it that this level of diligence is applied to the civil aviation industry, and not to something like cars and buses which kill way more people per distance travelled. My guess would be it's because people like to blame somebody else. If it's a plane then there are large organisations to blame i.e. the airline and the manufacturer. While with cars almost always the blame is with the driver i.e. the people. When it's a manufacturer's fault however nobody bats an eye if they have to recall 500,000 cars to install something that would decrease the risk by 1/10th the amount if everybody uses seatbelts.
- cstross 11y ago
  Aviation industry accident investigation practices were adopted from the railway industry. Back in the mid-to-late 19th century, train accidents killed about as many travellers per capita as road traffic accidents in the 1950s. So the industry adopted a set of principles: no-blame impartial accident enquiries managed by an independent board who would deliver a report on the causes of the accident along with recommendations for best practice to avoid it recurring. Upshot: rail passenger travel is now by far the safest form of land travel. Bear in mind that a Boeing 777 like the one that went missing on flight MH370 costs on the order of $200M. You then have potential liability for the passengers (if the airline made culpable/criminal mistakes) of maybe $2-4M per head, for up to 400 pax on a 777 -- they're big (MH370 had only 239 people on board) and you're looking at a billion dollar accident. The airlines and manufacturers thus have a huge incentive not to let this happen again. (Compare to a car accident: 90% or thereabouts are down to human error, and the vast majority of fatal ones "only" involve a couple of deaths, capping the potential liability two orders of magnitude lower.)

melling 11y ago

You are understating the need so solve the mystery. The black box is out there somewhere. If enough debris is found maybe it will help investigators calculate the origin of the crash. That thing where you're trying to shame people because they have interest in one thing while there's some horrible problem in the world needs to be solved, is a bit of an old troll. "We're curing erectile dysfunction while people are dying of other diseases. What's wrong with you people?" We should give this troll a name.

reitanqild 11y ago
My first idea is a variation of all-or-nothing: if you cannot get rid of all X now - tjen you shouldn't even start thinking about it.