Boeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative Findings [pdf] - ddulaney
https://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/TI%20Preliminary%20Investigative%20Findings%20Boeing%20737%20MAX%20March%202020.pdf
======
V_Terranova_Jr
Having worked with Boeing on other aerospace programs (not commercial though)
and having been on the Gov side, the basic findings ring true. Boeing's
culture really is as flawed as the report reads. The idea that Dennis
Muilenburg, however, originated or did more than prior company management to
foster this culture, is nonsense. They remain, even today, operating with this
culture. The real problem that stands in the way of "fundamental structural
reform" is that regardless of specific aerospace market, few alternatives to
Boeing exist. And don't think the corporate cultures at other traditional US
aerospace primes is consistently better.

The points about Government acquiescence to Boeing pressure in performing
regulation also resonate. Beware the tendency to make this a single-axis "more
vs. less" regulation issue. The solution isn't "more regulation". The central
concern should about regulatory culture. Ultimately, responsibility lines must
be drawn, standards established, adjudication performed, and unique or
specific situations accommodated. Inevitably, the "less regulation" crowd
corrodes the kind of regulatory culture that serves the best interests of the
populace in these processes. Good regulation depends on having highly-
competent, wise, empowered, and apolitical persons on the Government side.
While providing regulatory organizations lots of funding doesn't ensure that
they hire, empower, and maintain such a cadre, starving them of resources and
implying the Government can never be competent, so it should reflect the role
back to Industry, is pathological and will produce outcomes like the 737 Max.

We need to not just empower and provide adequate resources to regulators, but
also demand and foster a culture of competence and good judgment^. Making that
happen is a lot harder than arguing about "more or less", but necessary for
proper outcomes.

^"good judgment" here explicitly excludes decision-making with regard to
political implications

~~~
akira2501
> and foster a culture of competence and good judgment

I agree.. but I don't think you can do that organically. I think part of the
issue is the size of the corporations, the concentration of that corporate
power, and the inability of the market or regulatory agencies to function
correctly when this is the case.

You get cultures of competence and good judgement when there is a real
competitive market with multiple strong players each vying to have the best
products.

~~~
V_Terranova_Jr
I should have been more clear and said "foster a culture of regulatory
competence and good judgment".

This is certainly achievable with the right leadership, wide-basis political
protection (cannot be achieved when an agency's leadership is subject to
unprincipled undercutting by the President), and sufficient resources.

------
nrki
This is huge.

It confirms basically everything I've read over the past year on the topic
(mainly on hn). Culture of concealment, production pressure, self-oversight,
conflicts of interest, faulty assumptions.

Like many other lessons borrowed from commercial aviation, these are supremely
relevant to tech companies.

Edit: BA stock down 1.27% in after-hours trade. I guess the market has decided
that this behaviour is fine.

~~~
pjc50
Boeing is too nationalist to fail; there is no way the US government will
allow itself to be without a civilian airliner builder and have to buy planes
from Airbus or Embraer. Plus they'd take with them the absorbed remains of
McDonnell Douglas.

~~~
jammmety
Boeing are poised to acquire Embraer: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
embraer-m-a-boeing/boeing...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-embraer-m-a-
boeing/boeing-to-take-over-4-75-billion-embraer-unit-targeting-airbus-
bombardier-idUSKBN1JV1D2)

~~~
cmurf
It should be disallowed. It's more anti-competitive conglomeration, and risks
the contagion of corruption.

~~~
Anarch157a
Don't expect it to blocked under our current president. Bolsonaro is basically
a Bazilian Trump.

------
unlinked_dll
Most troubling to me is this:

> AA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing design
> approaches on its transport category aircraft were potentially unsafe and
> failed to comply with FAA regulation, only to have FAA management overrule
> them and side with Boeing instead

from the linked citation [0]:

> In 2015, the FAA drafted an issue paper, finalized in 2016, that offered
> Boeing a chance to establish compliance without implementing a design
> change.4 At least six FAA specialists refused to concur

>It is our understanding that non-concurrence by FAA technical specialists is
fairly infrequent and not to be taken lightly. In addition, my staff has been
told that it was virtually unprecedented for six or more FAA specialists to
jointly non-concur on a single issue, highlighting the gravity of their
concerns regarding the rudder cable issue. Despite all of this, in June 2017,
the F AA's Transport Airplane Directorate upheld the controversial issue paper

Someone needs to name names, and those people should be investigated for
corruption.

[0] [https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/amid-
co...](https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/amid-committees-
ongoing-investigation-into-the-certification-of-the-737-max-chairs-defazio-
and-larsen-raise-new-and-serious-concerns-to-faa-about-other-safety-related-
issues-)

~~~
cptskippy
Sounds like the FAA needs to do some house cleaning in there upper management
because they're in bed with Boeing.

~~~
unlinked_dll
It's the White House that is responsible for doing that "house cleaning" of
the FAA's upper management, since those folks are political appointees that
serve at the pleasure of the President.

I don't know about you, but I don't see the current admin prioritizing the
flushing out of regulators in bed with industry.

That's why I say name some names.

~~~
drevil-v2
I'd like to point out that vast majority of this lax enforcement of FAA
oversight of the Boeing 737 Max certification happened during the Obama
Administration by political appointees of Barrack Obama and the Democratic
Party.

I am centre-left political (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) and It
really really bothers me to see the double standards. Once you start to notice
the pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every f __king
scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias.

~~~
stevehawk
It's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted. Apparently we're all
fine with blaming the current administration for not firing them but we're not
ok with blaming a previous administration for hiring them?

We've also had countless posts talking negatively on the very merger that lead
this iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-Douglas) with no regard for the
administration that basically encouraged the merger.

It's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are corporate shills.

~~~
unlinked_dll
> Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current administration for not
> firing them but we're not ok with blaming a previous administration for
> hiring them

One of these two parties has the ability to affect change. It's not the
latter.

~~~
kovac
The official report just came out. On what grounds would the existing
administration just fire upper level management at an early stage?

The appropriate response would be to force FAA to ground the planes (if and
which FAA did not do themselves), and wait for the official report and then
open an investigation in to Boeing and FAA. Time is a factor to take into
account.

------
leeoniya
> These five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s
> development and production of the 737 MAX and the FAA’s ability to provide
> appropriate oversight of Boeing’s 737 MAX program.

No, these five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of Boeing’s
development and production of ALL its aircraft.

~~~
gpm
I don't think the statement even needs to be limited to aircraft. We can see
the same themes in the development of the CST-100 starliner capsule
(spacecraft).

~~~
ImaCake
I think this explains a bit of the fanboy love for SpaceX. It's the energetic
little guy versus the corrupt lethargic vampires.

~~~
HarryHirsch
They want to deliver man-rated rockets but can't even construct a fuel tank
that won't blow up. SpaceX has got its own set of problems.

~~~
zlsa
You're leaving out their 83 completely successful launches of Falcon 9 and
Falcon Heavy[0] in favor of their R&D efforts.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches)

------
mrtksn
There was an interview with the new Boing CEO quite recently:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/boeing-david-
cal...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/boeing-david-calhoun.html)

He pretty much blamed it all on the previous CEO.

Asked whether he believed American pilots would have been able to handle a
malfunction of the software, Mr. Calhoun asked to speak off the record. The
New York Times declined to do so.

“Forget it,” Mr. Calhoun then said. “You can guess the answer.”

Does it mean that Boeing maintains its position that the MCAS was not "that
bad" and it's on the pilots for not handling the Boeing's mistake? Is he
suggesting that we should avoid Boeing Aircraft unless the pilots are
American?

~~~
bumby
This seems like a rationalization in the CEO’s part.

Boeing’s system safety analysis categorized MCAS as ‘hazardous’. Even with the
wrong categorization (there’s a strong argument it should’ve been labeled
‘catastrophic’) if they followed their own design procedures hazardous systems
should have redundant sensors. Besides the fact his reply defies a good
understanding of human factors in engineering, when management deflects
responsibility to their customers it is extremely troubling.

Cognitive dissonance is dangerous in leadership.

~~~
temac
It's even worse than that. If it is believed that the plane is only suitable
for American pilots, it should not even be sold outside of the USA...

------
everybodyknows
Other reporting has called MCAS the product of a systemic failure, and asserts
underfunding of the FAA to be among the ultimate causes. Underfunding being
"worked-around" by delegating the work to Boeing:

>(ARs)—Boeing employees who are granted special permission to represent the
interests of the FAA and to act on the agency’s behalf in validating aircraft
systems and designs’ compliance with FAA requirements

Others have pointed out that the conflict of interest inherent in this must
pervade AR's daily work environment, and indeed the report pays brief lip
service to the contradiction:

>4) Conflicted Representation. The Committee has found that the FAA’s current
oversight structure with respect to Boeing creates inherent conflicts of
interest ...

So why do it that way, and why do my searches of the investigation's PDF for
"funding", "budget", and "staffing" come up empty?

Consider, then, that responsibility for setting the operating budget of the
FAA belongs to the House -- the very same running this investigation.

[https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/miss...](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/mission/budget/304496/faa-
fy2019cj-budgetfinal508compliant.pdf)

------
aschatten
An excellent write up of the crashed by a pilot:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-
crashes.html) I highly recommend you read it. It‘s not to exonerate Boeing,
but it does bring up issues that none else talked about.

------
ps747
Wow, this is incredibly damning and all but blames the Boeing and ineffective
FAA oversight for the tragic crashes.

I hope this leads to significant fines for Boeing and jailtime for the more
egregious actors involved; according to the report, their negligence directly
led to the loss of lives. Knowing how important Boeing is to national
security/the economy, I'm skeptical that enough will be done...

------
haltingproblem
(edits: formatting).

Cue the obligatory comment of Boeing is a company with an insanely great
engineering culture and their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of
building great and _safe_ products. This great culture was all lost as a
result of the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3].

Somehow the Boeing apologists want you to think that the unholy trinity of the
ghost of McDonnell Douglas through the CEO at the time of the merger Harry C.
Stonecipher (the father) and Dennis Muilenburg (the Son) who greenlighted the
737 MAX are responsible for this abomination. So much so that of the thousands
of engineers who worked on the 737 Max not a single one raised issues with the
engineering of the aircraft or wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing
or quit in protest. They were all held in thrall by the power of this unholy
trinity!

In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate
causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for
a subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. What is
plausibly the cause for the engineering fiasco of the 737 Max? Why go back to
the merger and why not blame the 9/11 or the election of G.W Bush or even
Barack Obama's for this disaster? Why go back to the 1997 merger with
McDonnell Douglas? Because it allows Boeing engineers to deflect blame for the
terrible product they built and foisted on the flying public by coasting on
their past reputations.

Eventually, all stellar organizations, public or private, become complacent
(e.g. Israeli Intelligence Failure, 1973). Boeing made an unstable plane with
a dangerous MCAS to get it to market fast. They then topped it off by making
it rely on a single sensor and made the dual-sensor an _upgrade_. A sophomore
engineering student with a 101 course on probability can see that this is
tailor-made for diaster. They made an essential safety feature an upgrade!!
They then proceeded to hide this monstrosity from every regulator and airline
on the planet and insist that the plane was no different in every aspect of
its flight behavior than its predecessor which was over 30 years old.

Boeing had become so criminally blatant that the head of airline training at
Lion Air inquired about extra training for the 737 Max and they rebuffed him.
After the Lion Air crash, Boeing proceeded to cast aspersion on the safety
practices of Lion Air. Lion Air _does_ have a spotty safety record but in this
case, Boeing rebuffed their requests for additional training because it would
set a precedent for other airlines in SE Asia. When that lack of training was
a factor in the crash, Boeing proceeded to blame Lion Air. The mind boggles at
the sheer chutzpah!

The recently released messages show how Boeing employees worked in unison to
ensure no extra simulator training was required. Great engineering culture
obsessed with safety, this aint!

Go ahead and blame the McDonnel Douglas merger for this. Or accept that
whatever stellar engineering culture existed at Boeing is dead. We as a
society need to stop scapegoating imaginary forces in the past and giving
Boeing's engineers a pass. We need to start agreeing that strong regulation is
necessary to ensure the safety of the products Boeing puts out.

[1] [https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-
merg...](https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-
to-the-737-max-crisis/)

[2] [https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-
sharehold...](https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-shareholder-
first-culture/)

[3]
[https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max](https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max)

~~~
larsga
> This great culture was all lost as a result of the merger with McDonnell
> Douglas

Not because of the merger, but because management deliberately set out to
change the entire company culture from being engineering-driven to being
business-driven. Business-driven as in: cut corners to save money.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-
boeing...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-
its-bearings/602188/)

~~~
haltingproblem
That is exactly the point I am refuting. That is non-falsifiable. The claim
you are making that the merger changed culture which changed their safety
outcomes is as non-falsifiable as the dot-com crash killed their morale which
changed safety culture.

Of course the merger argument sounds more plausible i.e. it is a better
rationalization but again non-falsifiable.

Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is irrelevant. Arguing over that
is a distraction from the fact that Boeing's _current_ engineering culture
pushed this product to market.

~~~
jcadam
> Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is irrelevant.

Oh I'd disagree. To fix the problem and prevent it from happening again at
Boeing or elsewhere, it would be good to figure out how the culture at Boeing
became so broken in the first place.

I worked for Boeing back when the corporate HQ was moved from Seattle to
Chicago. At the time I remember thinking how bizarre that seemed. Why would
someone in a leadership position want to separate themselves from the rank and
file and lose that valuable insight and visibility into operations?

Eh. My problem was likely in assuming that most corporate leadership positions
are filled with actual leaders.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Condit needed an excuse to hide from his wife: Move girlfriend to Chicago and
construct a reason to spend time there.

------
mazsa
The key technical reason is this one: "While multiple factors led to these
accidents, both crashes shared a key contributing factor: a new software
system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS),
which Boeing developed to address stability issues in certain flight
conditions induced by the plane’s new, larger engines, and their relative
placement on the 737 MAX aircraft compared to the engines’ placement on the
737 NG."

~~~
mazsa
Cf. "How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer / Design
shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to
blame" [https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-
boeing-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-
boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer)

------
thrwaway8347346
> In March 2016,Boeing sought,and the FAA approved,removal of references to
> MCAS from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM),ensuring 737 MAX
> pilots were unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the
> aircraft’s handling without pilot command.

Are the execs in jail?

~~~
salawat
No, but the Chief Technical Pilot who requested it has lawyered up with an
independent lawyer from Boeing's general counsel.

Odds are his conscience is weighing heavily on him, and he doesn't trust that
Boeing's council won't attempt to pin it on him acting alone. Corporate
culture is rife with leaving subordinates to act on implied mandates in order
to insulate executives from the potential for criminal liability. The idea is
if the criminal thing works and no one finds out, the exec gets their bonus;
if it blows up, the exec never _told_ them to do it.

------
sn41
I am concerned that the Dreamliner is also a potentially unsafe aircraft, as
has been suggested often. Please see the last bullet point on page 5. Is
anyone aware of this exact issue?

------
kuon
Knowing this, how fixable is the 737 MAX technically and politically?

~~~
ReptileMan
Technically - easier. They have to remove MCAS and retrain the pilots as a new
type.

But rebuilding the trust will be harder.

~~~
Zak
The aircraft could probably be safe and pass certification with MCAS in place,
but the following issues made it dangerous:

* It was undocumented.

* It had too much control authority. It was able to adjust the trim such that the elevator could not overcome the trim's pitch-down force, and such that the average pilot did not have enough strength to use the manual trim wheel to neutralize the trim in a dive.

* They removed the switch to turn it off. On older 737s, there's one switch to turn off automated control of stabilizer trim, and another to disconnect power to the motor, completely disabling electric trim. On the Max, both switches perform the latter function.

* They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the logic for that since two sensors are physically present, and damage to AOA sensors is not rare.

* The AOA disagree warning light, which would have clued pilots in to the presence of a faulty sensor was not present in most aircraft, despite documentation to the contrary.

~~~
cesarb
> They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the logic for that
> since two sensors are physically present, and damage to AOA sensors is not
> rare.

The logic for that is really simple: each sensor is wired to one of the two
computers. Each computer uses its own sensor. This was an already existing
design, MCAS is just a new function added to these computers.

(AFAIK, other aircraft like Airbus have multiple sensors wired to each
computer, so for them it would be natural to use more than one sensor.)

~~~
phire
Both computers have access to both sensor's data. The computers are networked
together.

This is how they implement the AoA disagree function (the one which was broken
in 90% of MAXes for unrelated reasons). It's also how they managed to
implement a software update which makes MCAS take data from both sensors.

The logic for not implementing both sensors is much more insidious.

If you implement both sensors, then you have to deal with the case that
infomation from sensors might disagree. The computer has no idea sensor is
providing correct data, so the only thing it can really do is disable itself
when the sensors disagree.

If MCAS has the ability to disable itself, then it must provide feedback to
pilots it has done so, and have pilots follow some procedures. If there were
procedures, then Boeing would have to add pilot training about what MCAS was
and how things would be different when it disabled itself.

Boeing made it rely on only a single sensor to bypass training requirements.

------
WalterBright
> Boeing also withheld knowledge that a pilot would need to diagnose and
> respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by an erroneous MCAS
> activation in 10 seconds or less, or risk catastrophic consequences.1

Both the LA and EA crews did respond withing 10 seconds and restore normal
trim using the electric trim switches. LA worked on the issue for 5 minutes,
EA for a couple minutes.

The findings did not mention that Boeing issued an Emergency Airworthiness
Directive to all MAX crews after the LA crash that contained correct
instructions on how to recover from it - restore normal trim with the electric
trim switches, then cut off the stab trim with the console switch.

Both crews were able to restore normal trim repeatedly with the electric trim
switches. But LA never cut off the trim, and EA cut off the trim when it was
in a dive, not after restoring the normal trim.

~~~
acqq
I was not the pilot error, neither the first nor the second time. The planes
behaved exactly how no plane should be allowed to behave, effectively turning
on the “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that Dave” reaction many times. And
there are no reasonable excuses to that.

~~~
WalterBright
I'm not arguing that Boeing didn't make mistakes with the design, they did.
I'm pointing out that the "10 seconds" thing is not the cause of the crashes,
and that both crews (especially the EA one) did have the information they
needed to recover.

Runaway stab trim should never happen, but the reason the cutoff switches are
there are so it can be recovered from. It's the same with fire extinguishers
on airplanes. Fire should never happen on an airplane, but we expect the
pilots to know how to use the fire extinguishing systems when it does.

~~~
acqq
Some important points from the PDF that show that it was not the problem with
the pilots:

\- In 2015, a Boeing AR raised the question of whether MCAS was “vulnerable to
single AOA sensor failures….” Despite this, the aircraft was delivered with
MCAS dependent on a single AOA sensor.

\- After Boeing redesigned MCAS in 2016 to increase its power to move the
aircraft’s stabilizer at low speed, Boeing never reevaluated a single- and
multiple-failure analysis of MCAS.

\- In March 2016, Boeing sought, and the FAA approved, removal of references
to MCAS from Boeing’s Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM), ensuring 737 MAX
pilots were unaware of this new software and its potential effect on the
aircraft’s handling without pilot command.

\- Boeing’s design of MCAS violated its own internal requirements which
demanded that the system “not have any objectionable interaction with the
piloting of the airplane” and “not interfere with dive recovery,” which
occurred in both 737 MAX crashes.

\- In August 2017, five months after the 737 MAX was certified by the FAA and
three months after it entered revenue service, Boeing issued a problem report
to its supplier complaining that the 737 MAX’s AOA Disagree alert was tied to
an optional AOA Indicator display and therefore was not functioning on the
vast majority of the 737 MAX fleet worldwide.

\- Rather than immediately informing the FAA and Boeing customers about this
issue, and advising Boeing to fix the problem via a software update as soon as
possible, a Boeing AR consented to Boeing’s plan to postpone the software
update until 2020 (...)

\- Although Boeing prepared a “Fleet Team Digest” to inform its customers
about the inoperable AOA Disagree alert, the company never sent it, keeping
its customers in the dark about the inoperable alert.

\- Boeing provided Lion Air a Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM) on August
16, 2018, one year after learning that the AOA Disagree alert was not
functioning on most 737 MAX aircraft, highlighting the operation of the AOA
Disagree alert. Boeing failed to indicate that it knew the AOA Disagree alert
on the Lion Air 737 MAX aircraft was not operational.

\- Boeing did not acknowledge that the AOA Disagree alerts on an estimated 80
percent of the 737 MAX fleet were inoperative until after the Lion Air crash
in October 2018.

\- Boeing’s own analysis showed that _if pilots took more than 10 seconds to
identify and respond to a “stabilizer runaway” condition caused by uncommanded
MCAS activation the result could be catastrophic._ The Committee has found no
evidence that Boeing shared this information with the FAA, customers, or 737
MAX pilots.

\- Boeing had tremendous financial incentive to ensure that no regulatory
determination requiring pilot simulator training for the 737 MAX was made.
This incentive included a Boeing contract with Southwest Airlines, its U.S.
launch customer, that would have cost Boeing more than $1 million per aircraft
it delivered to Southwest if pilot simulator training was required for
Southwest pilots transitioning to the 737 MAX from the 737 NG. At the time of
the Lion Air crash, Southwest had ordered or pre-ordered an estimated 280 737
MAX aircraft from Boeing.

\- In March 2017, the month the 737 MAX was certified by the FAA, Boeing’s 737
Chief Technical Pilot responded to colleagues about the prospects of 737 MAX
simulator training, saying: “Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go
face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”

~~~
WalterBright
There's no excuse for not reading, comprehending, and remembering the
Emergency Airworthiness Directive. Put another way, would you be comfortable
flying with a pilot who did not pay attention to EADs? I wouldn't.

Furthermore, the LA crew on the flight immediately preceding the LA crash
experienced the same problem, and simply restored trim and turned off the stab
trim system, and landed safely. They had no knowledge of MCAS. No
extraordinary feat of airmanship was required. No lightning reactions were
necessary. They simply remembered what the cutoff switches were for, as they
were supposed to.

~~~
acqq
> experienced the same problem, and simply restored trim and turned off the
> stab trim system, and landed safely

As far as I remember it was far from "simply." Apparently they had luck of
having a third pilot in the cabin present, who didn't have to maintain
anything else in the cabin and had the luxury and time to observe and think
about what is going on. The pilots in charge were overwhelmed by the killer
plane then too, which is completely expected -- note the "10 seconds" admitted
in my quotations.

So, no, as far as I remember, the previous LA flight actually doesn't support
your claims.

~~~
WalterBright
> they had luck of having a third pilot in the cabin present

They did indeed, one who remembered that the solution to runaway trim is to
turn off the trim system. This is something that is supposed to be a "memory
item".

Note that all three sets of flight crews successfully countered the runaway
trim using the electric trim switches. They were not overwhelmed to the point
of not understanding that the trim system was the problem, as they were
countering it.

This was so underwhelming to the first LA crew that they didn't even bother to
inform the next crew about it, or even have the plane taken out of service and
fixed.

~~~
acqq
> This was so underwhelming to the first LA crew that they didn't even bother
> to inform the next crew about it, or even have the plane taken out of
> service and fixed.

The pilots were from the cultures where deference to authority, specifically,
failure to even talk about the problem to those "above in the hierarchy"
provably previously caused other airplane accidents. The crews since learned
to function in the cockpit. But this required such an attitude outside of the
cockpit for those who managed respond, "sticking their necks out" from their
point of view, so they avoided it. Again, nothing to use as the proof that the
plane was not utterly dangerous.

~~~
WalterBright
> Again, nothing to use as the proof that the plane was not utterly dangerous.

I don't believe that a crew that thought they had narrowly escaped death from
a "killer plane" with some horrific defect would fail to notify the next
flight crew, and not have the plane grounded until it was fixed.

It's their _job_ to do that, and not doing it should bring them up on charges
of dereliction.

It's much more credible that they didn't think it was a big deal.

I don't have any more facts about that flight - nothing is ever reported about
it. I sure hope the NTSB includes it in their investigation, as finding out
what went on in that flight and what the crew did afterwards is crucial.


Zoitz       Horror story - ilikethecheese
http://www.zoitz.com/archives/36

======
holdenk
I blame scheme :P but maybe I'm a little too optimistic about the kids :P


Do Not use namecheap.com for any large site or important domain - highclass
Namecheap.com seems popular for a lot of tech companies. However, they seem to be not only cheap in price but in management.
I run a forum site with MILLIONS of visitors and about 5,000 TB of traffic per month.
Namecheap.com suddenly sent me a link warning that they will suspend my domain completely within 24 hours, if I did not delete two problem images (which were inappropriate/troublesome images but in the context of the forum posts, "a very poor attempt at humor").
I deleted the images and avoided being suspended, but the way they threatened to suspend my domain due to two images was ridiculous. If I missed the warning email or checked my email after 24 hours they would have completely suspended my domain.
I'm talking about a site with MILLIONS of visitors per month and ten thousands of posts per day, not some small blog.
They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for any enterprise site.
======
LorenzoLlamas
Maybe I missed it, but did someone point to the actual site with "millions of
visitors and 5 PETABYTES of traffic per month"? Is that right?

Don't want to seem harsh, but I don't care for unqualified rants against a
named entity, when the "accuser" doesn't name his own source.

And using vague words like "inappropriate/troublesome" seems a bit mysterious.
Were they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins making out?
Might make a difference.

And as others have already stated, it's pretty SOP for hosting and domain
companies to have this standard in place. Hate to say it, but it's in the User
Agreement. Else, run your own servers and domain name registrar (oh, and also
be liable for those same posts possibly).

Why we insist on not understanding that DNRs and hosts are, basically,
publishers, who have some rights, is beyond me.

Let me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email
within 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right). Is he off-the-grid hunting sea lions
in the north sea? And if his site is so big, he has no one to help him and no
backup staff except... only him?

This same crowd will balk that FB didn't remove that last murder video in 12.3
seconds, but demand that THEIR host or registrar give them 30 days.

Sheesh... internet shenanigans never stop, do they?

~~~
highclass
I have actually run a domain registration/reseller business in the past, with
20,000 domains registered (which is a lot).

I did not "police" a single one of those domains.

Like I said below, I was NOT using namecheap DNS or hosting.

> And using vague words like "inappropriate/troublesome" seems a bit
> mysterious. Were they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins
> making out? Might make a difference.

I don't care how much problematic the images were. 24 hours warning for
threatening to suspend a domain is ridiculous.

> Let me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email
> within 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right).

Yes that is reasonable reason to be upset. I thought the email was
spam/phishing at first. The email also could have easily have been deleted by
spam filters.

------
ploggingdev
Send them an email asking for an explanation and also let them know why this
is not a good way of dealing with inappropriate content. Also reach out to
their customer support asking for an explanation. Let us know when you hear
back from their support team.

~~~
highclass
I agree the two images were problematic, but they were mixed into millions of
forum posts...

Anyways, if your domain sites contents break the AUP at
[https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-
tos.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-tos.aspx) , it
seems they will suspend your domain that fast...

Again ridiculous. They even replied "Yes, we have checked the content of the
web-site and based on its not deliberate nature we have provided a reasonable
time-frame for removing the illicit content."

Reasonable time-frame being 24 hours. More ridiculous.

------
coreyp_1
Were they hosting the site, or are they just the domain registrar (and your
site is on servers from another company)?

~~~
highclass
I was using a third party DNS AND my own hosting/network. They threatened me
on a Registrar level, which is nearly unheard of.

~~~
coreyp_1
Indeed. I would suggest that you leave them immediately.

------
Slaul
Interesting, I hadn't heard of any problems like this when I decided to use
them for my last few domain name purchases. Maybe I should look into
switching. Do you have any recommendations by any chance?

~~~
highclass
I'm looking around right now. The registrar for reddit.com and ycombinator.com
both are [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/)

I am considering them and a few foreign registrars right now.

I still am in shock how namecheap might have suspended my domain.

~~~
finid
I think they were just been paranoid about potential legal penalties, so take
it easy.

~~~
highclass
That is ridiculous. They threatened to suspend my domain within 24 hours if I
did not delete two images.

I don't even use their nameservers... They threatened to yank my domain in a
registrar level which is so amateurish it shocked me.

------
idoh
Where are you planning on moving your domain to?

~~~
tinalumfoil
I've heard good things about Gandi. Since they host reddit I'm sure it would
take a lot for them to shut down a site.

------
tarikozket
Amazon has the same procedure with hosting.

~~~
highclass
I don't have anything hosted on namecheap. Not even the sites DNS uses
namecheap.

b.t.w. hosting and DNS registration are totally different, legally and
technically.

------
magma17
4chan

~~~
gt2
I would think a site like 4chan would get these kinds of issues daily.

------
andrewmcwatters
> They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for
> any enterprise site.

If this is action they take at scale with millions of visitors I wouldn't even
risk it with something so intimate as a blog.


Farewell, USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier) - dctoedt
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/01/166242595/farewell-uss-enterprise

======
guylhem
That feels so wrong. It is still floating and could be useful.

Destructing it is just destruction for the sake of it.

Why not at least sell it to a friendly country, who could use such power to
defend itself from neighbouring enemies?

I'm sure Israel or Japan would welcome the gift - they sure could supply their
own planes and weapons.

It's a real shame to destroy so much investment - especially since, as noted
in the article, its speed is still competitive.

~~~
masklinn
> That feels so wrong. It is still floating and could be useful.

It's also an extremely old ship, maintaining it can't be cheap.

> Why not at least sell it to a friendly country, who could use such power to
> defend itself from neighbouring enemies?

A carrier is a force projection tool, it's for attacking stuff (or make clear
that you can attack stuff), to defend a country an airbase is cheaper, simpler
and more versatile.

> I'm sure Israel or Japan would welcome the gift - they sure could supply
> their own planes and weapons.

And fuel supply and crew and maintenance? For a _unique_ ship? No other
country on earth comes close to having an Enterprise-class carrier (let alone
Nimitz-class), I'm really not sure they'd have any use for it. Not to mention
a carrier on its own is basically dead (or a floating museum), you need a
carrier group around it which costs the same as the carrier itself.

Also Japan is definitely out, they are not allowed to get weaponry for any
other purpose than defense (Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution), and as noted
above an aircraft carriers is anything but a defensive platform.

> It's a real shame to destroy so much investment

You do realize the Enterprise has been in active use for more than 50 years
right? It's the very first nuclear-powered carrier in human history, and the
one and only ship of its class (so replacement parts have to be custom-built,
where there are 10 bigger, better, more modern Nimitz-class carriers)

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was going to say pretty much the same thing. I got to tour the USS Carl
Vinson (CVN-70) when it stopped by Alameda and was moored next to the USS
Hornet (CV-12). Since our tour guide was caught up traffic we went over to the
Hornet and visited, and talked to them about the challenges of that
restoration/preservation as well.

Basically there were three things that stood out, first was that there was a
lot of 'toxic waste' in the form of stuff we know now to be carcinogenic used
in the construction of these things, and re-fitting them, or restoring them,
often involved complex programs of setting up barriers to prevent material
from escaping during refit, and then disposing of it. That is slow and
expensive work. The Hornet is like 1/3 the displacement of the Enterprise
(30,000 tons vs 90,000 tons) so there is a lot more space.

I was reminded of how sad it was to see perfectly functional 2U servers being
broken down for scrap, they can't justify the power it costs to keep them
running.

That said, I also thought "Ok, here is something the sea steaders could start
with. Make this the 'core' of their first floating island and build around it.
It solves two very real bootstrap problems, one it has a power plant that
generates useful electricity and comes with a helicopter 'airport' built in
for rapid transportation. Of course the chance of the US Navy handing over a
carrier to civilian hands with an intact nuclear power source is about the
same as a me winning the PowerBall lottery.

~~~
guylhem
A bootstrap platform for sea steader ?

That's a great idea - it would be put to a good use, and be an interesting
experiment in creating a community on an artifical island!

Hell, _anything_ would be better than just destroying it.

~~~
masklinn
You do realize there's a 50 years old nuclear plant inside the Enterprise
right?

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is true of course, but the power plant is very very simple. Its a fission
powered tea kettle. All the 'complicated' bits, the steam turbines the
engines, operate outside the tea-kettle part and have been maintained and kept
up to date. I don't know if they have done any long term radiological studies
on metal fatigue but there aren't a lot of moving parts to go wrong. No reason
to think you couldn't continue to use it for another 100 years. And since it
goes about 20 years on a single fill up, you'd probably get 50 years out of a
refueling if it basically stayed in one place.

------
showerst
Hopefully they bring back the name for the 3rd Gerald Ford class carrier
(CVN-80). It's scheduled for service in 2025 so presumably they'll name it in
the next 5-7 years.

~~~
trothamel
They announced today that CVN-80 will be the next USS Enterprise.

------
Hoff
A comparison of carriers in various fleets; the sizes, numbers, and countries:

<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/carriers.htm>

scroll down for the image.

------
harshaw
My father served on the Enterprise in the 60's as part of the around the world
tour. At that time the island was completely different as well as the air wing
complement. We have this giant photo in our house of the old square island and
an A-5 vigilante taking off. It's amazing to consider the the Enterprise has
been reworked and refitted so many times over a long career.

------
Millennium
Honestly, I'd repurpose it for use in coastal disaster relief. The reactors
and desalination facilities could provide emergency power and water, and if it
were set up to carry helicopters instead of airplanes it could serve as a base
of rescue operations.

~~~
philwelch
The Navy has maybe half a dozen ships that are specialized for that role
already.

------
dctoedt
At the inactivation ceremony a couple hours ago, the Secretary of the Navy
announced (via video) that the next nuclear carrier after the Gerald R. Ford
will be named Enterprise. Cheers went up.

(I was a nuclear-engineering officer on this Enterprise.)

------
buster
I must say i don't understand why so many people here are so sad that a weapon
is destroyed. In my book that's fucking great! I'm even somewhat disgusted.

But when i read the title i was sad as well... until i came across "The
aircraft carrier".

~~~
antidoh
I agree entirely with the idea of rejoicing at a weapon destroyed.

However, something like this represents world history, as well as personal
history. Life is more complex and nuanced than "weapons bad," because we live
in that world as it is.

I served on the Enterprise in the late seventies, and while I can't say I'm
_sad_ , I'm definitely experiencing a nostalgic episode. (I never went to sea
on the Enterprise, overhaul in the shipyard only, so I can't tell you anything
more interesting than how to lay tile on a metal deck or how to use a needle
gun to strip paint.)

~~~
buster
That would explain it for you, but i doubt all those commenters are your ex
colleagues ;) I'm aware that life is complex. But comments like "hey, let's
give it to Israel they can re-arm it and have a nice weapon there" make me
sick, sorry.

~~~
antidoh
You don't have to have been somewhere to have nostalgia for it and its
associations.

Edit: I agree, better not to give it to anyone.

~~~
buster
Ah well, they should put it in a museum i guess, not scraping it.

edit: Or make a museum out of it, with the size of the ship :P edit2: I see,
and according to another link, the ship basically will be destroyed by
removing the reactor, so there is no way around it...

------
trothamel
A livestream of the inactivation ceremony is here:
<http://www.livestream.com/usnavy>

------
zrail
They're scrapping it?! That's a damn shame.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
With respect I disagree.

While I understand entirely why the Enterprise as is was originally
commissioned (dick waving with the USSR) the kind of missions the US Navy
performs today require more flexibility and less brute force.

Now the Enterprise's speed is, even today, still damn competitive. But to get
her ready to sail with her crew complement, supplies, and other logistical
issues would likely mean she couldn't be used as part of a fast reactionary
force.

She would be wonderful at long drawn out conflicts but how many of those does
the US intend to take part in in the next fifty years? Any?

~~~
masklinn
> While I understand entirely why the Enterprise as is was originally
> commissioned (dick waving with the USSR) the kind of missions the US Navy
> performs today require more flexibility and less brute force.

Meh. It's not like the Navy is decommissioning the Nimitz-class or scaling
back the Gerald Ford class. The Enterprise is at life's end (it was originally
planned for scrapping ~2015), and it's a pain as it's the only ship of its
class.

------
kmfrk
Disengage. :(


Ask HN: Programmer/Producer Happiness - dzonga
In what regard is programmer happiness important to you guys ? E.g in my case I drag my feet when I have to do assignments in Java, but I can work with Swift anytime of the day with quickness.
======
joe_coder
Stay with Swift, grasshopper I keep dragging my feet with Java all days... May
I become happier in a year or two if I get rid of it


Show HN: SuperMoney - mrmirz
http://www.supermoney.com/reviews/credit-reporting/credit-karma

======
mrmirz
With SuperMoney, I am trying to build the Yelp of the personal finance niche.

Looking for some good feedback on UX and general thoughts on the value
proposition, site, branding, or anything else useful.


Twitter Account of NBC News Hacked - server102
http://prohackingtricks.blogspot.com/2011/09/twitter-account-of-nbc-news-hacked.html
======
jontsai
Really, is that hacking? That's more like someone chose a bad password or
didn't practice good password policy.


Ask HN: What are good resources to learn dynamic programming? - gautamnarula
I understand the basic ideas behind dynamic programming (and I think it's really cool and very useful tool to understand), but I struggle with DP programming on Leetcode and in interviews.<p>Are there any good resources out there for DP? Multiple sources have said that DP feels like "magic" when you don't get it, but once it "clicks" DP problems become very easy. I'm still waiting for it to click.
======
LTailor
What is dynamic programming. First, you need know what's recursion for better
understanding. If yes, you can make step #2 :)


Bloom Filter (Python recipe) - jcsalterego
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577684-bloom-filter/

======
haberman
One thing that takes a minute to sink with Bloom Filters is that the size
requirements are independent of the size of the individual elements! Storing N
elements with a given false positive probability has a fixed cost, whether
you're storing integers or 100MB strings.

If you are concerned with speed, a bloom filter is exactly the kind of thing
I'd never implement in Python. Twiddling bits is orders of magnitude more
expensive than in C.

~~~
raymondh
Python is written in C and the time consuming parts of this algorithm are
delegated to C modules (random, sha256, long int bitshifts, etc). Also, the
space efficiency (which directly related to effective use of high-speed cache)
is language independent.

If you care about the cost of the Python glue code, the PyPy project nicely
optimizes that away. Unless you're writing for a Google production server, the
programmer time writing this in C will likely never be paid back in saved CPU
cycles.

~~~
haberman
What you have said is theory. Here is practice.

I wrote a simple bloom filter in C. It took about an hour, including
debugging. Here is my bloom filter vs. CPython and PyPy doing 1M lookups:

        $ time ./bloom
        real    0m0.027s
        user    0m0.022s
        sys     0m0.002s
        $ time python bloom.py
        real    0m32.876s
        user    0m32.693s
        sys     0m0.119s
        $ time pypy bloom.py
        real    0m42.280s
        user    0m42.054s
        sys     0m0.178s

In other words, C was 1216x (or 121,600%) faster than CPython, and 1564x (or
156,400%) faster than PyPy. If it took 1 second in C, it would take 20 minutes
in Python. Put another way, Python runs this algorithm about as fast as a the
C algorithm would run on an 8086 from 1978.

Here is my C implementation: <http://pastebin.com/TexbJjbB>

Here is the Python program I compared against (using code from the article):
<http://pastebin.com/gqw7C68e>

~~~
raymondh
Not an apples-to-apples comparison. The Python version is fully general, using
Random() to create probes (as many as needed). Instead use the optimized, 4Kb
fixed size version shown later in the recipe. Also, improve your timing by
making the loop in a function and using something other than range(1000000) to
fill-up memory (like timeit does). The C version should also use sha224 for
comparability (otherwise, you're basically comparing two different hash
functions in two different languages meaning that some of the difference can
be ascribed to the choice of hash algorithm).

That being said, you've done a great job showing that it doesn't take long to
correctly implement this algorithm in C. That is a nice win.

~~~
haberman
> Not an apples-to-apples comparison.

These kinds of arguments make sense if you're 20% different, or 2x different,
or even 10x different. When you're 1000x different, no amount of minor
tweaking is going to bridge the gap.

Using the 4k version and using timeit() instead of range(), the speed is 21
seconds instead of 32 seconds, so it did speed up, but it's still 800x slower.
I'm pretty sure that only a tiny fraction of Python's time is calculating
sha224, so I don't think that making them use the same hash function is
necessary.

Look, Python is cool and has it's place. But it's annoying to get downvoted
for stating the obvious: algorithms like this will be much, much faster in C.
It's annoying to hear people insist that dropping to C is a waste of time when
my personal experience shows time and time again that it can lead to drastic
improvements.


Introducing SkyDrive for the modern web, built using HTML5 - varunsrin
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/20/introducing-skydrive-for-the-modern-web-built-using-html5.aspx

======
eiji
The problem with most of these cloud initiatives from Microsoft is the missing
integration with WinXP. LiveMesh and Skydrive desktop integrations are fine on
Win7, but there are still lots of XP users out there, and most of this stuff
does not work on XP.

~~~
varunsrin
SkyDrive is a browser-based cloud store, not a desktop application. So you
should be able to use it just fine on XP, provided you are running a modern
browser.

------
Karhan
Wow, this is excellent web software.


Bats use private and social information as they hunt - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-private-social.html
======
gerbilly
While this is almost lost knowledge these days, humans and other animals have
always paid attention to each other to find out what is going in on around
them.

The nature (or absence of) bird or animal calls or activity can tell you that
there is a large predator in the area.¹

Some animal calls are even specific to the type of threat as well.

It has even been proposed by some linguists that prairie dog calls satisfy
enough of the requirements to be considered language.²

1: [https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-
knows/](https://birdlanguage.com/products/what-the-robin-knows/)

2: [https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-
news/prair...](https://medium.com/health-and-biological-research-news/prairie-
dog-chatter-the-science-behind-a-new-language-9144ace4114f)

------
LinuxBender
Somewhat off topic, semi-related, I have a bat that thinks I control the
weather. If it gets too hot or cold, it will go just outside my window and
squeak at me. There are patterns to it's communication, though I have no idea
what exactly it is saying. I can talk to it and it talks back. Obviously we
don't understand each other. I can tell it "get back to work" (taking out
mosquito's) and it will leave. I think it understands tone of human voice.

------
grawprog
When we were doing bat surveys most nights, after we caught the first few
bats, we would watch later ones actively avoiding the mist nets we'd set up as
the ones we caught called both from the nets and from the bags we had them in.
It was also known at the time we were doing our work bats communicate feeding
areas to each other and are extremely vocal in their hibernacula and roosting
sites.

------
will_hoskings
The bats should carry around a big banner with a warning: Are we allowed to
collect information about you? :D


Don’t buy the MacBook Pros even on sale, in my opinion - tomduncalf
https://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont-buy-the-new-macbook-pros-even-on-sale-in-my-opinion
======
tomduncalf
Posting this from my six month old Macbook Pro 15" on which the spacebar has
just started doing double spaces. Going to try and clean it with compressed
air, but even if that works, it's unacceptable in my opinion that such a key
piece of hardware on such an expensive machine should be so fragile.

The fact that at some point I'll have to take it back to Apple and probably be
without it for several days due to the complexity of the repair makes this 10x
worse - I am freelance so need this machine for work, so being without it
(especially for such a seemingly trivial reason) is unacceptable and
absolutely not what I expect when I buy Apple (previous Macbooks have worked
for years without a single issue).

If they release a redesign, I'd swap it in a flash (I do actually quite like
the keyboard to type on otherwise, but seems like the quest for thinness has
gone too far this time!), but if this problem is as widespread as it seems who
knows what it will do to resale values.

Would be great to get talk of this spreading as far and wide as possible, as
judging by anecdata on Twitter and elsewhere, I am far from the only one with
these kind of issues, and to me that implies a fairly major design flaw.

~~~
NetOpWibby
I’m experiencing this issue with my B key and it’s annoying af. I use my MBP
in clamshell mode with an external keyboard and I dread going mobile.

~~~
wilwade
I had the issue with the doubling with the b key as well.

Mine was out of warranty, so I fixed it myself.

Failed: compressed air Failed: cleaning under the key.

Success (but not recommended) I removed the key, then pulled off the glued
membrane. Cleaned all with 90% alcohol. Took a new membrane (but you might be
able to use old) and used E6000 and a toothpick to glue it back. Replaced
butterfly and key.

Not a good solution, but it worked.

It looked like the contacts were getting coated and not making good contact?
Perhaps heat?

Best of luck.

~~~
NetOpWibby
I am not confident in my ability to do that but it's good to know there is a
solution if I get desperate enough. My mechanical keyboard is saving my life
right now.

------
mortenjorck
It's just incomprehensible (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design
leadership) that the 2016 MacBook Pro has continued to prove such a regression
from the 2012 design.

Professionals demand good design: tools that meet our needs in efficient,
reliable, and even elegant ways. Apple's line of professional laptops has
traditionally delivered this by and large, but the problem with the 2016
platform is that _vanity_ finally overtook good design.

Good design weighs the trade-offs inherent in any design decision and decides
based on the greatest benefit to the user. Vanity design decides based on the
greatest benefit to the designer. And based on the dongles I've seen co-
workers cart all over the office because Apple abandoned HDMI, based on the
keyboard reliability issues that have affected the same co-workers, and based
on the dearth of compelling Touch Bar applications that have sprung up in the
past year and a half, I don't think there's any question that vanity has taken
over.

Honestly, I think it's time for Ive to take more of an advisory role at Apple
and let some of the many talented industrial designers in his org take Apple's
hardware design back to fundamentals.

~~~
madeofpalk
> (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design leadership)

Ive has been leading design at Apple for 26 years. I think the failure lies
elsewhere.

~~~
entee
Counterargument: for a long time Ive had Jobs to push back on Design excesses.
Now there's nobody that has the same kind of design sense at the top to push
the product in practical directions.

It's like Lennon and McCartney, they wrote better songs when they were
together than apart (I'd argue).

~~~
madeofpalk
I actually don't think that's a counterargument at all. If someone like Ive is
able to run unchecked and produce the failure that is the MBP keyboard, then
that's a problem outside of Ive.

~~~
mortenjorck
Based on the folklore, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine Jobs holding up
an iPhone USB cable at a meeting and yelling "why the hell can't I plug this
into my MacBook Pro?" I can't imagine Cook doing the same.

------
tlrobinson
Tangential rant ahead:

I've been pretty disappointed in the latest MacBooks as well (mostly just the
keyboard and mediocre performance improvements over previous generations), so
as a hedge I thought I should give Linux another try, hoping in the ~5 years
since I last attempted it one of the more user-friendly distributions would
have figured out how to make installation painless.

Nope. It's easy enough to get a basic installation of Ubuntu or elementary OS
working, but you still have to muck around with things like wireless drivers,
graphics drivers, multitouch support, etc to get everything working as well as
macOS. After half a day of trying to tweak kernel parameters and other things
I gave up. Sometimes I enjoy that sort of challenge, but not right now.

I understand it's difficult to support a wide variety of hardware without the
support of a company like Apple/Microsoft/Google, and supporting proprietary
drivers is controversial and not the community's top priority. It's just a bit
disappointing desktop Linux still isn't ready for the mainstream, despite
multiple commercial companies working on it.

~~~
secstate
I grew up messing with GNU/Linux, so I know what it means to tweak kernel
parameters and not have working wifi. But in the past five years of using
Ubuntu full-time I haven't had a single issue with out of the box stuff
working on any of a number of Lenovo machines.

Hell, I even have 16.10 running on a Macbook Pro from 2013. Curiously, the
baked on RAM chip has a bad patch on it somewhere and macOS chokes when doing
a full re-install, yet Ubuntu seems more fault-tolerant about memory and runs
mostly fine (there are display corruptions when first booting, but putting it
to sleep and waking it up causes them to go away until the next reboot).

Meanwhile I would argue macOS has become much worse given the closed-nature of
the software and the price premium to use it. It's hard to complain about
having to tweak things when the OS is free/libre.

~~~
tlrobinson
> But in the past five years of using Ubuntu full-time I haven't had a single
> issue with out of the box stuff working on any of a number of Lenovo
> machines.

Yeah, my only experience is with Apple hardware. Obviously Apple doesn't work
with Ubuntu to certify their hardware like Lenovo does
([https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/](https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/)),
nor would I expect them to, but MacBooks are one of the most popular laptops
so I sort of expected it to just work.

> It's hard to complain about having to tweak things when the OS is
> free/libre.

I agree, and I'm definitely willing to tweak things here and there, but it's a
non-starter for most people. I guess they can still buy Ubuntu certified
hardware or whatever, though.

------
fains_rains_00
Ah, a MBP complaint thread. Here are mine (Maxed out 15):

1\. New keyboard is _painful_ to type on. I use it 99% of the time with
external trackpad / keyboard / monitors but that other 1% pisses me off.

2\. Battery life is mediocre. I don't keep track but I'm always surprised how
quickly it goes when I'm unplugged. How about stop trying to make them
thinner?

3\. The touchbar is f*cking horrible. It's a bad solution to a nonexistent
problem. My fingers touch it by mistake often, finding ESC is awful, and worst
of all, it sleeps! Give me back my ESC and media keys.

4\. A computer with two GPUs SHOULD NOT CRASH when plugging in external
monitors. It should also wake from sleep properly in clamshell mode. A lot of
the time I actually have to unplug one monitor to get either to turn on.

5\. Support for external retina monitors is terrible. I spent the better part
of a day getting two Dells to be readable / look good.

6\. Xcode. A medium sized project compiling now hits all 8 cores so hard music
will actually stop playing (I use Roon with a pretty heavy CPU load).

Unless things turn around, this will definitely be my last MBP, maybe leaving
the dev ecosystem altogether.

~~~
spronkey
Ugh Xcode. What an awfully heavy piece of software. Makes Eclipse feel
lightweight.

------
ballenf
Louis Rossmann has examined these issues in detail on his electronics repair
YouTube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU)

(I disagree with the level of his vitriol against Apple, but I appreciate his
deep teardowns and clear explanations. He just doesn't seem to understand how
valuable the Apple software is vs. Windows to those who need or appreciate
osx.)

~~~
marcus_holmes
It's not Apple's great software. Most of Apple's software is shit (as opposed
to 3rd parties who write OSX apps).

It's the fact that it's mostly-decent hardware running a mostly-compliant
POSIX OS that looks enough like GNU to make it usable (and compatible with web
servers).

If someone, ffs anyone, made a decent, reliable Linux laptop, Apple would lose
the dev market in a month.

~~~
kakwa_
This is called a Thinkpad.

I'm running Debian on a Thinkpad at work, this work great... except for a few
points.

It's always a bit harder to integrate with the rest of the internal
infrastructure: * AD integration in your favorite email client to have auto-
completion on emails is a bit tedious * Exchange calendars are also annoying *
Mounting (and, first, finding) the windows shares can a bit tedious * Password
renewal is not integrated that well

It works, but it takes a few hours to figure out and configure.

And sometimes you are just stuck with Windows/OS X because of a specific piece
of software (for example in my case, the video conferencing tool we are
using). I never used a truly Linux only environment in professional context, I
always had a Windows VM also.

~~~
nvarsj
> This is called a Thinkpad.

Indeed! The keyboard is amazing. The latest thinkpad x1 carbon is pure bliss,
and Linux works out of the box for everything without any problems.

------
julian37
Just in case anybody thinks this thing is overblown:

\- On my 2016 MBP the left alt key only registers about 30% of the time now.
It seriously hampers my workflow.

\- On my SO's MBP (slightly newer make but same keyboard type) the "H" key
stopped working, now it's registering double (she's happy: "At least I can
type, I just need to use the backspace key.")

\- At work two people have the same type of machine and both have had keyboard
issues.

In short, I know four people who own this machine (including myhself) and _all
four_ have had issues.

Needless to say, this is a serious let-down and makes me think my next machine
will be the first non-Apple in 15 years. Sad, really.

------
lkrubner
The Board Of Directors has structured Tim Cook's pay so his pay is dependent
on shipping specific amounts of iPhones. This would be a good plan if the goal
was to boost the stock price for the few years that iPhone seems innovative,
compared to anything that Samsung can come up with. This strategy did work for
several years, look at 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016. But the same strategy
amounts to a plan for allowing the company to collapse in the long-term. Where
are the new products? Where are the new ideas? Some people point to the vast
cash reserve that Apple has and they view this as a source of strength: "Apple
must be doing something right to have that much cash on hand!" But a large
pile of cash can also be read as a weakness; in particular, it can be seen as
a lack of ideas. For comparison, consider the last time Apple had super fat
margins and a product that was light-years ahead of the competition: the
1980s. Apple did not pile up cash at that time, because it was still investing
in the future. Profits were reinvested in new products. The leadership could
see where the future was going, and they chased after it aggressively. The
difference between then and now is obvious. Apple has a huge amount of cash,
but they have no ideas about how to invest it. Tim Cook is a good operations
guy, he has some talent for optimizing the supply lines between China and the
West. But he has no ideas. And nowadays, given the growing number of problems,
I think we have to wonder if he fully deserves his reputation for being a good
operations guy.

~~~
lkrubner
Why is this downvoted?

------
tomxor
> neither Apple nor its Geniuses would acknowledge that this was actually a
> problem [...] Apple Geniuses installed, with its pristine keyboard and
> maybe-different key switches. The answer is that after a couple of months, I
> started to get temporarily dead keys for seemingly no reason. Again.

This is the exact same behaviour that drove me away from Apple 10 years ago:
First deny existance of issue, second place blame on customer, third force
customer into a generic replacement script of parts in accending order of
price. Repeat until customer does not return out of frustration, accepts the
broken product or is pushed out of warrantee.

I think this strategy worked for them on average when hardware design flaws
were less frequent, it maintained their facade of absolute perfection at the
cost of a few lucid customers... but it leaves a particularly sour taste for
those whom it does affect, and I think they are fast approaching the threshold
where it will backfire and destroy their image.

At this stage denying the existence of these types of problems is an insult to
anyones intelligence, deep technical literacy is not required - Anyone who
buys Apple products for more than beholding their aesthetic beauty can see the
simple truth in this case: that it is broken.

------
tptacek
Concur. I liked the new keyboard when it worked. But after two week-long
service appointments to deal with dead keys, I've given up on it. Those
laptops are defective. I'm using a 2015 15" for now.

~~~
madeofpalk
This is the hard part - it’s supposedly a pro machine, yet they expect you to
not work for a week while they repair the keyboard that fails by a single
speck of dust.

~~~
tomduncalf
Exactly this

------
tomxor
This appears to have been aggressively flagged since it's suddenly dropped
from the front page to the 6th page in a matter of minutes and has a better
point to age ratio than most all above it...

Could anyone explain why? it looks highly suspicious to me. I understand that
many are protective over Apple products but putting that asside, this an
objective and valid warning to people looking to buy this otherwise popular
computer.

~~~
madeofpalk
Apple (among others) posts are automatically “downmodded”. They require a much
higher score to remain on the front page

~~~
tomxor
Are you suggesting that Apple have automated bots attempt to censor hacker
news? or is this more of an official thing where any posts regarding Apple are
weighted down due to being considered too mainstream? or is it just a
sensitive topic to many people?

I can easily imagine any but I don't know which is more likely.

~~~
madeofpalk
No, it’s a Hacker News ‘feautre’. There are a number of topics/keywords that
analysis found were being automatically weighted down for, I guess, generally
being low quality and spammy, or rarely leading to useful discussions. I guess
the intent is that the proper and good posts should “work harder” to push up
through the weight.

I tried searching for some links to cooborate it, but I wasn’t able to find
anything quickly on my phone.

------
kalleboo
My plan is to wait until there's a new model out, and then take it in for
AppleCare warranty repairs once a month until I hit their lemon limit and they
give me a new machine.

The durability of this keyboard is a joke. I even bought one of those rubber
keyboard condoms that makes the keyboard suck to type on and the H key still
got dust under it somehow and started typing hh.

~~~
hocheung20
Apple doesn't seem to have an official lemon limit but they replaced the top-
case 5 times on my 2016 and then gave me a 2017 with the same specs (slightly
faster processor), and it's already crapped out already although this time
they managed to replace the key and fix it.

~~~
madeofpalk
You’re right that there’s no official “lemon limit”, but hey do have a process
for it - it’s called ‘CRU’ (Customer Replacement Unit). It’s unlikely that
they’ll offer it unprompted, but really after three repairs I find it
difficult they would deny your request to have the laptop replaced.

It does require approval by a manager/“Lead Genius”, but you can get there by
being reasonable.

------
neonscribe
This isn't a "build quality" problem, it's a design quality problem. The quest
for thinness has taken precedence over reliable functioning. If they added a
millimeter or two they could put in a proper keyboard, but I fear they never
will. We see a similar problem with the "trashcan" Mac Pro, where they backed
themselves into a corner with a design that could not be upgraded. This is
just bad engineering. Form follows function, not vice versa.

------
esdott
As an owner of a small company who buys a few macs a year and uses one almost
solely, I fully agree with this. I’ve had to replace my latest mbp computer
two times now based on keyboard issues (the second time was power and keyboard
issues). The keyboard is a disaster. If you have kids, forget about it.

------
whywhywhywhy
Was given one of these at work, the keyboard started failing within a week of
taking it out of the box, some of my keys click much louder than others. My -
key has been stuck twice while editing this comment, my ISO enter key has a
dead zone and has failed to click once while typing this comment.

This machine isn't even 6 months old and it feels rickety and unreliable
because of this design disaster of a keyboard, I wish I was over-reacting.

I will not be buying another Apple machine until this keyboard is reverted, I
can't imagine dropping thousands of my own money and having such an unreliable
janky input device.

------
vinceguidry
I can't recommend Apple anymore. With the recent trend of tech companies
towards walled gardens, the things that made Apple's walled garden great are
getting eroded by other companies. Their hardware really is subpar, they're
spending all this money on design and virtually none on maintenance, because
repair is a profit center for them rather than a cost center.

Apple software looks and feels great, and I used to believe their hardware was
just as good, but it turns out that their manufacturing processes are really
crappy. Remember the first unibody aluminum Mac? Wasn't a unibody. They glued
two pieces of aluminum together instead.

Look, I get it, you have to deal with the manufacturers you have. But Apple's
amassed a gigantic pile of cash, and they really should be using it to improve
their hardware. But they haven't been. And now, there's never been a better
time to switch platforms.

I was singing their praises 2 years ago. But the beauty was only skin-deep.

~~~
spronkey
The first Unibody Mac was still a very nice machine, even if the display
wasn't actually a unibody. The chassis felt like nothing before it, and it was
so nicely machined with a super rigid keyboard. MagSafe with separate board.
Extremely easy to access battery and HDD (with a really nicely designed little
lever system). Unscrew the bottom cover and easy access to RAM. Rigidity of
the chassis helped keep ports in good condition.

It's only real flaw IMO was the superglossy glass screen. Fragile and
extremely annoying under fluorescent lights. Plenty of the machines lasted a
long time despite the glue deteriorating from heat.

You're right about them spending no money on maintenance because repair is a
profit centre for them. Rossman is right about Apple's durability issues, too
- almost every generation of MacBook has had at least one significant design
flaw (from the 8600GT to delaminating screen coatings).

They're only getting worse as they go over the top with proprietary connectors
and interfaces, and iDevice levels of integration. I mean, Apple have
reimplemented M.2 and NVMe in their stupid proprietary SSDs at least 4 times
now. It's utterly ridiculous. If your custom blade SSD dies, which it
inevitably will at some stage, your only options are Apple support or OWC (or
gamble with second hand parts).

At least in the past they used to get the human stuff right (mostly). No Apple
MacBook has ever shipped with a low quality LCD panel, for example. I've never
heard significant coil whine from any Mac. I've never heard any Mac that has
loud fans at idle (except under an error condition). I've never had a Mac that
burnt me. I've never had a Mac with poor speakers. The trackpads have always
been best-in-class. The keyboards have always been very good.

Until 2016.

------
conorh
This happened to my wife's macbook pro spacebar, $600 fix. It happens with
mine every so often too, but fingers crossed it has 'fixed' itself each time.

~~~
senorjazz
$600! ouch.

Had a similar problem (faulty key) with my dell precision laptop. $30 new
keyboard, few screws out, replace and back up and running.

The laptop is big, heavy and ugly. But I cannot have it out of action so every
part being replaceable was a huge plus. In fact it is so big heavy and ugly
that when I drop it on the floor, the floor dents :)

~~~
soperj
You can easy switch out any thinkpad keyboard, and they're not big or heavy.
Ugly is in the eye of the beholder, that being said, it's a laptop, not a
purse.

------
virtuexru
The last great Macbook Pro was:

> MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

The new models are subpar in build quality imho and the touch bar is
completely useless tech.

~~~
Ocerge
Yep, those are the holy grail machines at my shop. Everybody that has one is
skipping their turn when they are due for an upgrade. Unfortunately I got
hired too late and have a 2017 15-inch.

~~~
post_break
Why? They still sell that model: [https://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/)

~~~
Ocerge
Not our choice, IT only lets us choose the newer models.

------
tjpnz
My spacebar locked up on me briefly a week after purchase - calling it dust
would be BS. Doesn't bode well for the future.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Thing is, this is actually dust. It's just a single speck of dust is enough to
mess up these mechanisms because they're so delicate.

This would be less of an issue if you could pop the keys off, but again the
mechanism is so delicate popping a key off is enough to irreparably destroy
the mechanism in most cases.

------
hedora
Even when brand-new, and working properly, these keyboards are a disaster. IT
has been rolling upgrading people to them at work, and the number of external
keyboards has skyrocketed.

So has the number of new lenovos.

------
j32fun
I can relate to what the article says, and yet find it hard to break away from
the ecosystem given the tools I've come to use every day runs so well on the
Mac. Muscle memory with shortcuts and all.

I've found a quick workaround to simply let the machine cool down. Eg. When
running Docker previously and when the machine got heated, I found keyboard
problems keep cropping up consistently. Letting it cool for about 20 minutes
with a laptop cooler seemed to help.

~~~
tomduncalf
I'm an iOS dev so have no other choice - but even if I did, I like pretty much
every other aspect of the Mac (both this specific laptop, and the ecosystem)
and am happy to give Apple my money, but expect a certain level of quality in
return, which this generation of keyboards seems to lack.

~~~
j32fun
Definitely agree with you. I feel underwhelmed with the 2017 MBPs (typing on
one right now). And you're absolutely correct: if you're developing for
certain app systems, you have no choice. I'm a Ruby developer and I remember
years ago people switched to Mac simply so they could use Textmate. Some tools
just work better on the system (for better or for worse).

~~~
tomduncalf
I actually quite like the laptop otherwise - I walk to and from work with it
every day so the reduced weight and size is great - although the touchbar is
meh and the USB-C/dongle situation is still a pain!

------
marcosscriven
I have one of these provided by my employer - spacebar broke within a couple
of months.

Also, I kid you not, the 'H' key was not functioning on one in the Regent
Street Apple store I was using while waiting for an iPhone battery
replacement.

Essentially, you have to avoid getting any detritus on the keyboard of any
kind. I no longer eat any snacks or sandwiches at the computer, which is
probably a good thing anyway.

------
entee
Doesn't Apple have a ton of in-house engineers that use their hardware every
day and therefore must have these problems as well? Shouldn't they fix them if
only to keep their engineers from the pain?

~~~
timgilbert
Presumably they attribute any failures in typing to the chronic headaches they
have from walking into Apple's invisible walls too often.

------
oldcynic
Fits with my experience.

Aside from hating the feel of the new keyboard in my 6 months ownership of the
new Macbook Pro it went back for warranty keyboard repair twice.

I sold it and bought a second hand 2015

------
doc_holliday
Damn, my Macbook Air 2013 logic board just gave out, and was considering the
upgrade to Macbook Pro 2017 as logic board is running at £450 replacement
cost.

After reading other's thoughts here, I think I have to avoid Macbook Pro for
now, I hope they change this in the next release.

Annoying as I need a machine with Xcode.

~~~
vinceguidry
I was considering getting a Mac Mini for Xcode and developing remotely on it
using my Linux desktop. I figure I can just edit the code on the desktop and
push it to the Mac when I need to build. If I get a good workflow going I'll
share it.

~~~
doc_holliday
Yeah, I was thinking of similar, would be good to see how it works out for
you. There's obviously the command line tools for building, but I would miss
the integration of Xcode as an IDE for iOS storyboards etc.

Otherwise I've been looking at using remote servers from macincloud.com /
xcodeclub.com, but haven't tried that yet.

------
cpncrunch
I use a keyboard cover and it helps reduce this issue. When you do get a crumb
under a key and it stops working, the solution is to keep hitting the key hard
until you dislodge/break the crumb. Low tech, but it works.

~~~
hocheung20
This will eventually break the tiny legs in the keycaps rendering your key
permanently inoperatable.

~~~
cpncrunch
I've only done this about twice in the lifetime of the keyboard. I'm not doing
it every day.

------
silman
Been using a 2010 15" Macbook Pro since i found it in the dumpster in 2014
(yup...), it was my first ever time owning a macbook and using OSX (outside of
some time on friends computers, etc) and i love that thing. I used linux
before but wasn't so hot on the grueling labor of repairing simple stuff, and
so i was stuck on windows coming from a windows-fanboy past - now i am a huge
OSX fan for its combination of ease of use and POSIX compliance; but i refuse
to buy any new macbook pro.

I want my magsafe charger, i want my displayport and ethernet port, i want my
CD drive, i want to be able to replace the battery myself (done it twice), and
to swap hard drives (done it four times) and RAM (once) easily, I want
physical keys for escape and media buttons.

I have gone so far as to personally take out the motherboard and replace a
single tanatalum capacitor with an aluminum-polymer capacitor (requiring me to
scrape off some of the soldermask off so i could solder to the ground plane
easier since the Al-Poly cap is much larger) because the tantalum one was
causing GPU kernel panic crashes. (Big thanks to Louie Rossman for the
tutorial video!)

I've brought this thing back from the brink of death many times and i will
continue to do so until Apple cleans up their act and makes a true developers
laptop again.

~~~
FullyFunctional
Funny I have an identical situation with my 17" 2006 MBP which has been
repaired, and upgraded countless time. It has passed to many family members
but it's back with me and I love it everytime I use it. Unfortunately, High
Sierra doesn't support it so I don't know what it's future holds. My MBP 2016
is a disappointment; TB 3 is cool but I hate the touchbar and keyboard.

------
emersonrsantos
MacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper
because they don’t have touch bar. I can’t replace the keys at home (expensive
parts, so many things can go wrong), so it’s waiting for pickup to go to a
company to stay there.

I’ll probably sell it and replace with another Lenovo, which is one of my
machines since 2011 and it’s only two philips screws away to receive
maintenance and upgrades.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> MacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper
> because they don’t have touch bar

Nope not true at all, the 2013 has a user serviceable keyboard, removing a
keycap wont destroy the mechanism like it does on the USB-C MBP.

------
mychael
This tells me theres a worse problem at Apple: Groupthink.

No one was bold enough to call BS on this poorly designed keyboard. Everyone
just went along with it.

------
MertsA
And the worst part about it is that it's incredibly hard to replace the
keyboard on the MBP. For most other laptops it's just a screw or two, a few
plastic clips, and a ribbon cable to replace it. They're also super cheap for
just about every manufacturer out there other than Apple and you can get a new
keyboard delivery included for ~$15-$25. For the MBP you pretty much need to
get the whole top case as one assembly because instead of just a few clips
Apple rivets the keyboard to the case! And it's not just a couple of rivets
either, try a couple dozen.

Absolutely insane how not only does Apple make the keyboard just about
impossible to replace, but they also make a keyboard that's simultaneously
much much more failure prone than any other keyboard that I know of. Here's a
great video of a madman actually replacing the keyboard instead of just
replacing the whole assembly.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMueATtTcQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMueATtTcQg)

------
akoster
I hope that issues like this further open a two-way channel of communication
apple has with "pro"-oriented users. For most of us, computers are tools,
which must meet our connectivity and performance needs (encompassing raw
compute power and hardware endurance requirements). To continue serving this
market well and staying relevant to professionals and power users, Apple needs
to take into account our needs and use cases when designing and releasing
future products, which was quite evidently an afterthought for the 2016
MacBook models.

If apple tomorrow released an updated 2015 rMBP with a Coffee Lake or Ryzen2
CPU, an optional dGPU, 2 (or better yet 3) full-sized USB type A ports, and
(only in my dreams) a full-sized number pad, I would more strongly consider a
purchase than migrating back to the PC world for my main PC.

I am hopeful Apple recognizes their shortcomings, learns from them and
produces more innovative and powerful hardware that meets the needs of the
professional and power-user groups.

------
jayp
I just switched back to Thinkpad X1 w/ Windows. With Linux Subsystem for
Windows, it's been roughly working out. though I am currently maintaining two
copies of things - one for Linux and one for Windows for lots of tooling. Not
sure how to optimize here. Only been a few days. Re-learning keyboard
shortcuts.

Only pain: not having iMessage on laptop.

------
nodesocket
I am a Apple supporter and shareholder, but will admit that I loathe the
butterfly keyboard on my MPB with Touchbar. The amount of typos I make (mostly
missed key strokes) rivals my iPhone which is impressive. I have also
experienced the "dead" key issue when dust or hair get's under a key.

------
ehvatum
The technological anorexia plaguing Apple is progressing. Disorientation,
lethargy, inability to complete simple tasks such as arithmetic, and fragility
are all pathological symptoms. Apple employee injuries sustained by walking
into walls, slowdowns caused by lack of energy reserves, irreversible damage
inflicted by the lightest touch, degradation of capabilities once taken for
granted, such as rapidly adding 1+1+1+1, coupled with staunch denials that any
problem exists - these are not just warning signs. They are symptoms
immediately recognizable to any trained practitioner denoting the sorry fact
that, without intervention, Apple will not be getting better. No recovery may
be reasonably expected.

------
snakeboy
Last May I bought a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" on sale for $1100 from Best Buy.
Humorously it had a higher user review score on their website than the 2016
model (4.6/5 vs 4.5/5) and was ~$1300 cheaper.

From everything I've heard, I lucked out on that one!

------
rasz
All you need to know about Apple Engineering by Louis Rossmann
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)

------
kahlonel
I'm honestly thinking of switching to Thinkpad X1 Carbon now, but I HATE
windows. And from what I've heard, Linux doesn't bode well with it. Anybody
here Linux running on X1 Carbon?

~~~
sofaofthedamned
I am, it's awesome with Fedora 28. There a couple of things to twiddle, mainly
regarding sleep, but after that it's flawless. I can detail it a bit more if
you like once I'm not on a phone.

~~~
kahlonel
Would love to hear it. I'm mainly concerned about the trackpad, wifi
performance and power consumption.

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Apologies for the delay:

Power consumption - pretty much the same as Windows. I did enable tlp and put
`powertop --auto-tune` in the startup.

Trackpad is fine but it suffers from the same issue my XPS 13 (2016) has under
Linux - occasionally tap-to-click stops working. A couple of clicks and it
comes back but it is annoying.

Wifi performance is awesome, i'll max out my 300mbit internet on it, it's a
league above the 'killer wifi' that Dell persist with.

The biggest issue and one that's apparently shared with the new XPS models is
that Microsoft decreed their 'connected standby' sleep modes can't coincide
with s3 (normal sleep). As Linux doesn't seem to support the new mode you have
to patch the initrd line to insert a new ACPI table. It's a pain in the arse
but you only need to run it once on each BIOS update. It's detailed here
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_\(Gen_6\)#S0i3_support)

Once that's done Fedora 28 is awesome on this, and the keyboard is leagues
above the XPS or the latest Macbooks. Highly recommended.

------
bogomipz
I recently had one of the new Macbook Pros for work and experienced exactly
what the author describes. It happened regularly enough that is was a real
issue. I finally got rid of it.

The can of air never resolved the issue either. I had to tap the side of the
laptop and press down on the keys.

I honestly wouldn't recommend someone buy one either. They took forever to
refresh the MBP and that fact that they released something after all that time
with this issue is a joke. I won't be looking at Apple again for my hardware
needs.

------
dogdutyascetic
I haven’t had any issues with the 2016 tb version. But then that’s only 1 data
point! Actually it’s the best Mac I’ve owned by far. The keyboard has been a
big improvement as has the trackpad, screen, speakers, build quality and
switch to USB c, reduced weight and size, etc. I upgraded from the redesigned
2012 which had a lot of glitches. New designs always take a while to work out
all of the glitches. But generally I don’t see a lot of threads on bad
keyboards. So I suspect this is fairly isolated.

------
jiripospisil
I'm not a huge fan of the keyboard on my late 2016 MBP 15" myself (I would
prefer the previous version, the buttons don't have the nice "clicky" sound
anymore) but it has been rock solid ever since I got the laptop (November
2016) and has been in constant use since then (8+ hours every day).

------
jonkiddy
I have my MacBook Pro on a stand then use a bluetooth keyboard and external
monitor. Rarely do I use the actual keyboard.

If Apple created something similar to a Mac mini with a laptop battery I would
buy it immediately. I know it wouldn't work for everyone, but it would suit my
needs.

~~~
kalleboo
What do you need the battery for? No power at your desk, or just something a
basic UPS could handle?

~~~
jonkiddy
You're absolutely right, a simple UPS would be sufficient for my needs. I'm
beginning to wonder if that is all I'm missing from my setup.

------
kevin_b_er
Form exceeded function. This isn't much different from stories of Apple power
adapters with strain relief that always broke because the designers/marketers
prohibited the engineers from making a proper strain relief.

------
post_break
Just an FYI, Apple still sells the older 2015 model:
[https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/specs-2015/)

~~~
akoster
I hope they keep doing so until a newer model with a descent keyboard comes
out.

------
aklemm
I moved on to an HP Spectre and Windows 10 from my 2009 MBP...I'm mostly happy
with it, but VERY SAD that the MBP era seems to have ended rather than getting
better and better. It's a damn shame.

------
Overtonwindow
I use a 2012 MBP that’s still going strong. The newer models with
irreplaceable (at least by us mere mortals) hard drives, batteries and memory,
and permanently pushed me away from buying a Mac again.

------
arthurjj
Any suggestions for good non-Windows laptops in the $1000 price range? I'm
seriously considering just buying a refurbished MacBook Pro from 2013 at this
point.

~~~
bennycwong
I think the dell XPS 13/15 or precision 5510 line is the successor to the
MacBook Pro. I recently picked up an XPS 13 and installed Linux. I really
prefer it to the MacBook Pro 2016 I have at work. The only thing missing is
iMessage, which unfortunately is why I haven’t gone full Linux.

------
kahnpro
So far I haven't had any problems with mine, purchased 4 months ago... _knocks
on wood_

------
cmclaughlin
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnot sure what you're talking about. It's best keyboard ever.

/sarcasm

------
jacksmith21006
What is up with Apple lately. The Homepod is a total train wreck. No mic mute
button. No input jack so can not use as a speaker. No stereo. Siri still
terrible.

------
peterbraden
I had an employee provided macbook air which had constant issues with driving
an external display. (I think it was firmware problems). When the keyboard
broke after 10 months, I was pretty happy to have a solid reason for a
replacement.

New macbooks are junk.

------
jiveturkey
> _This old MacBook Pro is still fine_

Then why did you buy a new one?!? Excess consumerism drives the tech ahead,
sure, but I can only have so much sympathy for your buyer’s remorse.

The problem must be environmental or physiological (he presses the keys harder
than average, or something) because keyboard malfunction isn’t some recall-
level dysfunction as he wants to make it out to be.

That said, the new keyboard is indeed a travesty.

------
heavymark
Keyboard working here without issue. Noticed a couple issues earlier on, but
discovered was from a couple crumbs. If there were a major issue affecting
nearly everyone there would have been a recall or constantly news cycle about
it. So I don't think the answer is for others to not buy a MBP because 'you'
and some others are experiencing issues. Instead, I'd recommend you and others
affected bring it into get fixed.

That being said, I'm sure the keyboards will continue to improve with each
generation, albeit with compromises such as to get thinner they change the key
styling and eventually will be touch only with haptic feedback (which I'm not
excited for) but will be inevitable.

~~~
nathanaldensr
I think you need to reconsider the things you're saying. "A couple crumbs"
rendering a key useless is a problem, not something to hand-wave. And yes, the
issue is widespread enough that I've read several blog articles, stories, and
comments on several websites about how terrible the keyboard is. This isn't
some cheap $20 keyboard part that is expected to fail; this is Apple hardware,
frequently claimed to be the best in the business.

Why "you" in scare quotes? Do you think people are lying about their problems
with the keyboard? People don't want to bring in their workhorse machines
(MacBook _Pro_ ) for repair because of a couple of crumbs. They don't want to
be faced with repairs into the hundreds of dollars. They expect the newer
MacBook Pros to be as reliable as the old ones, and this isn't happening.

Why are you so sure the keyboards will "continue to improve" with each
generation? They _haven 't_. The current trend is that they're getting
_worse_. Have you tried typing on a hard, flat surface for a lengthy period of
time? It _hurts_. Fingers were not designed to bang against unyielding
surfaces for hours on end.


Facebook’s open-sourcing of AI hardware is the start of a revolution - stevep2007
http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/12/facebooks-open-sourcing-of-ai-hardware-is-the-start-of-the-deep-learning-revolution/
======
stevep2007
Open-sourcing Facebook’s AI hardware means that deep learning has graduated
from the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) lab into Facebook’s
mainstream production systems intended to run apps created by its product
development teams. centre.


Wootoff today - drm237

FYI: Woot.com is having a woot off today.<p>http://www.woot.com
======
adamdoupe
Hey, I dunno if anyone is interested, but a year or so ago I create a site to
get woot updates via Email or Text message.

Check it out at <http://wootwatchers.com> and let me know what you think.

------
mynameishere
A good example of the s3 chaos today, if I'm not mistaken

<http://s3.amazonaws.com/wootimages/wootoffdetour4.gif>

------
alaskamiller
maybe you should just point to it instead

~~~
drm237
Woot has been submitted before so submitting it again wont create a new
article...

~~~
Tichy
Maybe once is enough...


Want brand loyalty and better leads? Go against the grain - kiraleighleigh
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/want-brand-loyalty-better-leads-go-against-grain-kira-leigh/
======
quark33
This was so refreshing to read


Crew Builds a Flying House Modeled After UP - ubasu
http://gizmodo.com/#!5778006/the-house-from-up-has-been-built-in-real-lifeand-it-flies/

======
pvsnp
There's a more comprehensive coverage by ABC on this. With Video. (Warning:
Annoying ads) [http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/recreating-scene-disneys-
up-...](http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/recreating-scene-disneys-up-movie-
magic-engineers-kids-cartoon-computer-animation-entertainment-13068921)


Glyphosate (Roundup) Is (Still) Not a Carcinogen - rmason
https://www.croplife.com/crop-inputs/epa-glyphosate-is-not-a-carcinogen/
======
nabla9
More accurately: EPA says that the main ingredient in Roundup is not a
carcinogen. At least the recent court case in Britain against Roundup was not
relying on glyphosate being a carcinogen. There are multiple ingredients. For
example POEA (polyethoxylated tallow amine) that works as surfactant.

Even if there was an effect, it can't be very high, so I'm not very worried.


Homeland Security Detains Stockton Mayor, Forces Him to Hand Over His Passwords - pm24601
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151002/15583732429/homeland-security-detains-stockton-mayor-forces-him-to-hand-over-his-passwords.shtml
======
jlgaddis
I hope this starts happening to more, even "higher-level" politicians and
government officials. Only then, when they experience it firsthand, will they
realize just how crazy they've allowed things to become. Then -- maybe --
we'll start to see changes being made.

------
pm24601
Agents told him that it was "routine and not unusual" to be forced to hand
over your laptop and phone.