Just a short note. Real short. Since the Max9 door plug blow-out on that Alaska plane (Alaska has had its own case of shoddy maintenance), there've been contradictory reports about whose employees last fiddled with said plug. Early on the finger was pointed at Boeing workers in Renton, then reporting that, yes it happened at Renton, but the workers were from Spirit (no explanation why they were in Renton in the first place, but it sure looks like they were/are there), now reporting just says Boeing in Renton.
One more case of McDonnell-itis?? Enquiring minds need to know.
31 January 2024
28 January 2024
Boeing Boeing - part the fifteenth
Well, I find more confirmation laying Boeing's screwups at the feet of the "acquired" McDonnell-Douglas. This has been an open secret, among those in touch with airplane manufacture, ever since the buyout/merger/takeover.
What got lost in all this shuffling is a corporate culture that once prized engineering and safety, replaced by one that seemed to be more focused on delivering profits over perfection. The Boeing community in Seattle has been vocal about attributing this slide to the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, whose leaders took over Boeing's top jobs and reshaped the culture around cost control.As the old saying goes, "you're not thief until you get caught". May be the 787/737 fiascos will be the slap in the head that fixes things? Nah.
X (not, nee Twitter) Marks the Nightmare
It should not be novel to hear from me that XML is the devil's spawn. It might be novel to read a lengthy (more or less)post mortem of a major IT scandal on-going in the UK. Not much in USofA news, but has been around since I subscribed to "The Guardian". In a nutshell: some years ago, The Royal Mail was partially privatized, and eventually the Post Office system was computerized. In the UK, there are some 14,000 post offices, some large proportion of which are just counters in some small business in some village run by that small business owner. When all this shifting happened, back in the late 1990's, it was decided to computerize said 'offices' with a centralized system. The datastore of record is Oracle.
The origins of what is called Horizon is convoluted, but began with a software contract with a (no longer extant) company called ICL, now part of Fujitsu; the latter very much in the dock, as the Brits say.
Here's where it gets interesting. Almost immediately, Horizon began dunning small business owners of Post Office locations with account shortfalls, i.e. theft from the Post Office. Many were convicted and sent to prison and some committed suicide. Yes, you read that last bit correctly.
The linked paper goes into much detail about the debacle, but the interesting (at a technical, not social, level) bit is that these chuckleheads who coded Horizon built it on Oracle and XML!!! This at the time when using XML was rudimentary; kind of like servlets in raw java before myriad frameworks.
Great idea!! Mix relational with hierarchical!!! What could possibly go wrong?
Basically, everything.
If you're still interested, much more reporting continues.
The origins of what is called Horizon is convoluted, but began with a software contract with a (no longer extant) company called ICL, now part of Fujitsu; the latter very much in the dock, as the Brits say.
Here's where it gets interesting. Almost immediately, Horizon began dunning small business owners of Post Office locations with account shortfalls, i.e. theft from the Post Office. Many were convicted and sent to prison and some committed suicide. Yes, you read that last bit correctly.
The linked paper goes into much detail about the debacle, but the interesting (at a technical, not social, level) bit is that these chuckleheads who coded Horizon built it on Oracle and XML!!! This at the time when using XML was rudimentary; kind of like servlets in raw java before myriad frameworks.
Great idea!! Mix relational with hierarchical!!! What could possibly go wrong?
Basically, everything.
Because Legacy Horizon was developed before the use of XML became widespread, Attribute Grammars fulfilled this function [not yet implementations of XML Schema] in Legacy Horizon.Yeah, just a bunch of un-verified character strings. What could possibly go wrong?
If you're still interested, much more reporting continues.
Cui Bono - part the first
Well, at long last the Newspaper of Record, aka NYT, has fessed up that macro is tough to do. And twice on the same (dead trees version) day. One says that macroeconomics blew it, while the second says that inflation is down again.
They're both interesting reads, so I commend them to you.
Macro is tough to do for two related reasons: 1) almost no macro data is census, but samples and 2) it's in the interest of Big Players to spin what data is available to suit their agenda. We saw that sort of shit from Gov. DeMented during Covid. If you ever believed that the experience in FL was as asserted by Gov. DeMented and his henchmen, there's a really historic bridge from Brooklyn ripe for sale. And, of course, there's the case of Orange Jesus and his $10 billion net worth.
The first report does, more or less, get to the heart of the matter: economists, as most data wonks, predict from past data and experience, even when the events driving current experience have no precedent in the available historical data. Covid disruption, to put it nicely, is most closely modeled on the Spanish Flu pandemic (and, no, it didn't come from Spain). Any data from more than a century ago, even if the macro folks looked at it, would be structurally irrelevant to today.
So, why did the macro wonks claim that the Sky was sure to Fall any day now? Because they ignored the structural reality staring them in the face. The Fed had plenty of data showing that, coming out of the height of Covid, that two facts were unambiguous: households had hoarded a few trillion Bongo Bucks because so much supply had shrunk. While approaching normalcy post-Covid, it was believed that supply would ramp up. Didn't happen, in large part because so much supply is centered in China, and Xi is a xenophobic imbecile who demanded his Zero Covid, no foreign vaccine nonsense. Cui bono, anyone?
The net result has been it's taken somewhat longer to burn off that hoard of cash. Now that the tank is nearing empty, and supply is returning to pre-Covid levels... well, wattayano, supply and demand are kissing each other on the lips.
Will the Soft Landing stay on course until Election Day? Orange Jesus has said he wants, among other evil events, a great recession for Sleepy Joe at least as bad as the one that got Dubya tossed from the White House. No, he didn't explicitly mention Dubya. Likely his brain no longer remembers back that far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's behaving more and more like Alzheimer's Ronnie in his last days as Prez. Saints preserve us.
They're both interesting reads, so I commend them to you.
Macro is tough to do for two related reasons: 1) almost no macro data is census, but samples and 2) it's in the interest of Big Players to spin what data is available to suit their agenda. We saw that sort of shit from Gov. DeMented during Covid. If you ever believed that the experience in FL was as asserted by Gov. DeMented and his henchmen, there's a really historic bridge from Brooklyn ripe for sale. And, of course, there's the case of Orange Jesus and his $10 billion net worth.
The first report does, more or less, get to the heart of the matter: economists, as most data wonks, predict from past data and experience, even when the events driving current experience have no precedent in the available historical data. Covid disruption, to put it nicely, is most closely modeled on the Spanish Flu pandemic (and, no, it didn't come from Spain). Any data from more than a century ago, even if the macro folks looked at it, would be structurally irrelevant to today.
So, why did the macro wonks claim that the Sky was sure to Fall any day now? Because they ignored the structural reality staring them in the face. The Fed had plenty of data showing that, coming out of the height of Covid, that two facts were unambiguous: households had hoarded a few trillion Bongo Bucks because so much supply had shrunk. While approaching normalcy post-Covid, it was believed that supply would ramp up. Didn't happen, in large part because so much supply is centered in China, and Xi is a xenophobic imbecile who demanded his Zero Covid, no foreign vaccine nonsense. Cui bono, anyone?
The net result has been it's taken somewhat longer to burn off that hoard of cash. Now that the tank is nearing empty, and supply is returning to pre-Covid levels... well, wattayano, supply and demand are kissing each other on the lips.
Will the Soft Landing stay on course until Election Day? Orange Jesus has said he wants, among other evil events, a great recession for Sleepy Joe at least as bad as the one that got Dubya tossed from the White House. No, he didn't explicitly mention Dubya. Likely his brain no longer remembers back that far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he's behaving more and more like Alzheimer's Ronnie in his last days as Prez. Saints preserve us.
27 January 2024
The Oracle of Atlanta - part the third
Well, CDC has moved JN.1 into the current-week column (full data, not estimate) of the data set, and it's now shown as 42.1% and a bit lower than the first published (estimated) value of 44.2%. Aren't stats wonderful?
26 January 2024
By The Nmbers - part the forty second
Oh my! The Orange Jesus has run up a new bill for shooting off his mouth - $83,000,000.
Way back when he lost the first Carroll case to the tune of $5,000,000. In that case, he set to appeal and had to post a 110% bond, or $5,500,000.
If past is precedent, then 110% of $83,000,000 is a whopping $91,300,000!!! That takes a hurtful chunk out of his asserted $400,000,000 in pocket cash. I guess we'll find out if he really does have that much folding green. Or, may be, he'll go begging to this sub-GED knuckledraggers to pay his bill. As he always has.
Way back when he lost the first Carroll case to the tune of $5,000,000. In that case, he set to appeal and had to post a 110% bond, or $5,500,000.
If past is precedent, then 110% of $83,000,000 is a whopping $91,300,000!!! That takes a hurtful chunk out of his asserted $400,000,000 in pocket cash. I guess we'll find out if he really does have that much folding green. Or, may be, he'll go begging to this sub-GED knuckledraggers to pay his bill. As he always has.
25 January 2024
By The Numbers - part the forty first
Now that Gov. DeMented has slunk off stage extreme-right, he can go back to book burning in sub-GED Florida. His own peaceable Kingdom. He, and his sub-GED acolytes, know that ya don't need no book larnin to walk behind a plow and make babies! We'll still party like it's 1829! So far, I think, he's only able to degrade public schools; the private ones can do so at their leisure. But what's the scope of private 'schools' in FLA?
Some data from the State, which is aggregated
Total enrollment in private schools - 445,067
Private schools - 2,556
Christian - 515 (80,291)
Jewish - 55 (12,231)
Non-sectarian - 968 (they don't tell us)
Montessori - 166 (15,869)
And, oh yeah, the knuckledraggers of PragerU have full reign in Gov. DeMented's state. Party like it's 1829!!
Some data from the State, which is aggregated
Total enrollment in private schools - 445,067
Private schools - 2,556
Christian - 515 (80,291)
Jewish - 55 (12,231)
Non-sectarian - 968 (they don't tell us)
Montessori - 166 (15,869)
And, oh yeah, the knuckledraggers of PragerU have full reign in Gov. DeMented's state. Party like it's 1829!!
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