Boeing outsourced the 737 Max software to engineers paid $9 AN HOUR!

Because India has such a fantastic and established commercial aerospace industry and you can get incredibly amazing code written for $9 and hour.

To recap, the 737 Max is a plane designed to compete with less expensive Airbus aircraft. It is different from previous 737s in that they moved the engines significantly ahead of the wing, radically changing flight characteristics, requiring new software.

Boeing thought that their processes were so mature that the software could be sent out to an Indian contractor that charges ridiculously low rates, and the result was they got horrible code that had to go back and forth between Boeing and the contractor, negating any savings because the experienced and mature coders would have gotten it right pretty much the first time.

Two planes have crashed because of flight control software that thought the plane was stalling during the take-off phase. The software insisted on pushing the nose down, which during take-off means you're dead. In an Airbus, when the flight control software does that, you just pull back on the stick and it overrides and cuts out the software. No problem. Not so in the 737 Max. You have to remember to hit a certain series of switches or disengage a circuit breaker, which in the heat of the moment as the ground is rushing up at you, is an extremely hard thing to do.

With the 737 Max, when the software insists on pushing the nose down, no amount of force trying to pull the control column back will make any difference at all. Only doing the override sequence or pulling the circuit breaker will save you.

This information is going to slaughter Boeing in court.

Thank you, profit culture that says to cut all expenses to the bone!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers


Edit to add:
A week and a half ago at the Paris Air Show, the International Airlines Group (IAG), which owns, among other things, Aer Lingus, British Airways and Iberia, signed a letter of intent to buy TWO HUNDRED 737 Max jets! Somehow Boeing convinced them to refresh their fleet, switching over from Airbus A320s. Curious, indeed: hookers & blow, bribery, blackmail, all of the above....

Letter of intent being rescinded in 3... 2...

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/paris-air-show-boeing-gets-order-for-200-max-jets/

Books Read, January-March 2019

01/04 Night Watch (DW 29), Pratchett (rr)
01/08 Going Postal (DW 31), Pratchett (rr)
01/10 Monstrous Regiment (DW 30), Pratchett (rr)
01/13 Thud! (DW 34), Pratchett (rr)
01/14 Making Money (DW 36), Pratchett (rr)
01/17 Unseen Academicals (DW 37), Pratchett (rr)
01/21 Snuff (DW 39), Pratchett (rr)
01/25 Raising Steam (DW 40), Pratchett (rr)
01/30 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers (rr)

02/01 A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers (rr)
02/02 Moon Over Soho (RoL 2), Aaronovitch
02/03 Whispers Under Ground (RoL 3), Aaronovitch
02/04 Broken Homes (RoL 4), Aaronovitch
02/09 The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez
02/23 The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Robb Walsh

03/07 Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers
03/11 Women Invent The Future, compiled by Rachel Coldicutt & Samantha Brown

Last year I started re-reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and in January I finished it up, except for the Tiffany Aching series. I’m saving that for later, especially since the last book for that series is the last book he wrote, and it’s a bit of a heartbreaker. Seventeen books in the first quarter of this year, which is, I think, respectable. Ten re-reads, eight of those Discworld, the other two being re-reading Becky Chambers as I caught a copy of her third book, Record of a Spaceborn Few, on sale.

And as a change of pace, a cookbook! It’s more than a cookbook, it’s a history of Tex-Mex with a bunch of recipes thrown in. And I’m going to talk about it first.

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