We would all have been better off if Boeing had replaced the 737 with the 757 as intended. Its quieter, more comfortable, and a better aircraft all around.
Another thing I'd point out is how often planes regularly fell out of the sky as recently as 40 years ago - my first flight 32 years ago or so, they still had kiosks in the airport to sell you life insurance.
Even with the MAX and the recent (last ~2 years) spate of incidents, flying is safer now than it ever has been, and certainly safer than it has been over its lifetime.
For (others) reference the oldest bits of code in our software are from the mid-late 90’s and the oldest systems still paying for support rely on parts to build that is not available at any price, its all just made of unobtainium, whereas I can sell them a brand news that does everything they have today and more.
You try building software with a version of Delphi that wont run on something newer than windows 7 and tell me how well that works out for you.
Some of those customers cannot be upgraded without hardware replacement, we can sell them a brand new system that will do everything (and more) their old one will, but they dont want to spend the money, and we are happy to take the money for support (the old CAPEX vs OPEX argument).
Some of this is sorta easy, its COTS hardware, but we also have much older systems that due to component obsolescence I simply cannot build replacements anymore. 10+ years of support ought to be enough for 90% of the products out there, at some point the answer really is “upgrade your hardware” - we didn’t sign up to indefinitely support not just hardware (much of which we cannot build spares for) much less the software ecosystem around the hardware.
Long term I plan on increasing support renewal costs for systems that are older than 10 years old to encourage hardware refreshes.
Like I still have to have XP VM’s to build firmware for older products, when is it reasonable to cut off service and support?
They changed how they make chewing tobacco (aka moist snuff) about 20 years ago and it has less of the cancer causing stuff (Nitrosamines) in it, its now closer chemically to snus - I’ll point out that Scandinavian countries have some of the highest use of oral tobacco in the world, yet last I looked some of the lowest incidences of oral cancer per capita.
The function of if tobacco causes cancer has as much to do with processing (it used to be cured by wood fire at a higher temperature which is where much of the carcinogenic properties came from) and the byproducts that processing creates, particularly Nitrosamine, its now cured differently in a process which is closer to snus, and somewhat safer.
Nicotine addiction (which I have) should be about harm reduction first, cigarettes are the only product that I can think of if used as commonly used will kill you or dramatically shorten your life, and it probably wont be cancer, it’ll be COPD, heart disease, or other cardiovascular issues - which are the same issues firefighters get from repeated smoke exposure. Breathing the byproducts of combustion is what’s really awful (and deadly).
I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them.
I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.
The actual site of the tank is 33.78356416377991, -117.99993897629278 [1] - its in an industrial park, and its not a large scale chemical manufacturing facility.
Its 'light manufacturing' for a company that makes custom formed acrylics for aerospace.
yes, largely - even if its just pin headers adding a detect line which shows a resistance between it and ground would be an improvement.
In my working life I've seen -
at least 3 different ways to do RS-232 on 8p8c
DTE-DCE is always an issue on standard 232, otherwise I wouldn't have so many null modem cables
232 and 3.3v TTL on the same board or assembly
3.3v and 5v TTL on the same board or assembly
Inconsistent labelling.
I'm in my mid 40's and I think there is a reasonable chance something with RS-232 serial timings will outlast me, it'd be nice to make it more foolproof, as its one of a very few interfaces that will work without drivers.
I do think as a matter of standard good design practice we should be putting clamping diodes on debug ports to prevent blowing things up if hit with the wrong voltage,