Hunisgung

> the regional price that the IA got was $3 per dose, the commission stepped in trying to get it down to $2.

Meanwhile in France, I can do a RT-PCR test paid by the state (around 50$ AFAIK) every other day with no question asked.

I know people at the European Medecines Agency that were angry at Ursula von der Leyen in December because she was always making public announcements (about the beginning and speed of the vaccination campaign) with no regard for the reality of regulatory activities or manufacturing and logistics constraints.

> OneWeb was able to aquire a user antenna which is apparently a breakthrough in cost reduction at $15

Greg Wyler, the founder of Oneweb, has a history of making bold claims that are not really supported by facts.

> Boeing actually had a nice thing going for them with the 787.

Recently, maybe. But the 787 program had its fair share of major issues with the significant delays during development and then the battery fires that led to the fleet being grounded.

I have had this talk many times and it usually went something like: "You don't realize how serious it is. We discover issue#13270 during the validation of the FCDC. If it occurs after the primary flight computer had a hardware failure and the pilot is landing with heavy side winds and the thunder strikes, there is a heightened probability of hard landing. Most dangerous aircraft ever. By the way, this weekend I'm taking an Avro RJ100 to go to Brussels; no problem there."

Same here. I know / worked with several engineers involved in the development of the Flight Controls of recent Airbus airliners and that often swore that they were going to avoid taking the model they were currently working on (usually based on some "critical" technical concern that turned out to be insignificant a few weeks later).

My answer was usually to mock them and say "so just because you are looking from too close and have lost perspective you prefer to fly an ageing aircraft or trust some random Boeing contractor more than yourself".

And fast forward ten years, the "deathtraps" they were working on - A340, A380 and A350 - turned out to be extremely safe (with fatality-free records).

> Interesting how Boeing and Airbus don't manufacture in China

Airbus has been building aircrafts at a Final Assembly Line in Tianjin since 2009. And many Airbus/Boeing suppliers have formed joint-ventures with Chinese companies to bid on contracts for the C919.

> It allows connection to and access from external sources (the public Internet) and airline operator networks to the previously isolated Aircraft Control Domain and Airline Information Services Domain.

I believe this contradicts the "systems are entirely separate" statement from the parent comment.

For more context, I was 99% sure they there was an issue with the component and that a hardware rework would have to be made sooner or later. The systems architect had some seniority over me but I could have pushed the issue hard enough for it to be addressed.

Then I did not take the high road. The guy was very obnoxious and I had other issues to address. So I let it slide to maintain my "this is important" quota for other matters.

And a couple of months later, when some units failed on the test aircrafts (I insist on the fact that this was not a critical system), I had an issue report showing that the issue was observed during supplier-side tests and then ignored.

You can read about the fact that there are NO data diodes on the FAA website

> The proposed architecture of the 787 allows connection to and access from external sources (the public Internet) and airline operator networks to the previously isolated Aircraft Control Domain and Airline Information Services Domain.

> Capability is proposed for providing electronic transmission of field-loadable software applications and databases to the aircraft. These would subsequently be loaded into systems within the Aircraft Control Domain and Airline Information Services Domain.

[1] http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library%5CrgSC.ns...

Or one of Boeing's many subcontractors.

> These systems are entirely separate, including the electricity that controls the systems.

This is not what Boeing said to the FAA 12 years ago when they asked to certify their network architecture

> The proposed architecture of the 787 is different from that of existing production (and retrofitted) airplanes. It allows connection to and access from external sources (the public Internet) and airline operator networks to the previously isolated Aircraft Control Domain and Airline Information Services Domain. The Aircraft Control Domain and the Airline Information Services Domain perform functions required for the safe operation of the airplane.

[1] http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library%5CrgSC.ns...

I guess they are a regulatory requirement because all of the modern aircraft have to request special conditions form FAA and EASA to justify why they do not comply with these requirements.

For example for the Airbus A350;:

> The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These proposed special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/12/17/2013-29...

That is false. Apart from the hard-coded and restrictive network configuration, AFDX is basically UDP/IP. There are many uses of bidirectional application protocols (like TFTP).

A couple of years ago, I was working on the verification team for a (non-critical) avionics system for a large commercial aircraft. I noticed one of the components seemed to have more failures than expected.

I reported the issue and the systems architect waved it off arguing that his analysis of the supplier data had proven that the MTBF for this component was over 500 thousand hours.

Few months later, a task force was established by the project management to look for an alternate supplier for this component after it became obvious that its failure rate was significantly higher than advertised.

Telling pilots that when they fly a Boeing, they are always in control and have the last say has been part of Boeing's narrative against Airbus for as long as I can remember.

This might have contributed to their reluctance to talk about adding flight envelope protection features and hiding that even when pilots are "manually" flying, the flight control computers can kick in.

Seems like a reminder that "reality must take precedence over public relations".

The 35 hour work week is mostly implemented by getting additional vacation (on top of the base 25 days off) and (at least for engineers) some contractually agreed overtime (that is already included in the yearly salary you negociate).

For example, I have a legal 35 hour per week contract with 38h30 of work per week, the difference being compensated by about 15 additional days off and the rest paid in overtime.

Where I work (large private company) working from 9 to 18/19 with a good hour of lunch break is quite standard (with administrative people tending to work more form 8 to 17).

In France, the norm is to start work three/four hours before noon and finish six/seven hours after noon (and of course do stuff after work but not before). If we stay on winter time, I can say goodbye to sunlight for most of the year.

> How exactly do you play ponzi schemes conservatively?

You find a bunch of greater fools to play with. But then you are back into scamming territory.