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> Creating obfuscated values using integers

While that is often neat solution, do not do that by simply XORing the numbers with constant. Use a block cipher in ECB mode (If you want the ID to be short then something like NSA's Speck comes handy here as it can be instantiated with 32 or 48 bit block).

And do not even think about using RC4 for that (I've seen that multiple times), because that is completely equivalent to XORing with constant.


> Security? MUCH worse.

Comparing single-purpose declarative language that is not even really turing-complete with all the ugly hacks needed to make DOM/JS reasonably secure does not make any sense.

Exactly what you can abuse in XSLT (without non-standard extensions) in order to do anything security relevant? (DoS by infinite recursion or memory exhaustion does not count, you can do the same in JS...)


If you would RTFA, they're removing XSLT specifically for security reasons. They provide the following links:

https://www.offensivecon.org/speakers/2025/ivan-fratric.html

> Although XSLT in web browsers has been a known attack surface for some time, there are still plenty of bugs to be found in it, when viewing it through the lens of modern vulnerability discovery techniques. In this presentation, we will talk about how we found multiple vulnerabilities in XSLT implementations across all major web browsers. We will showcase vulnerabilities that remained undiscovered for 20+ years, difficult to fix bug classes with many variants as well as instances of less well-known bug classes that break memory safety in unexpected ways. We will show a working exploit against at least one web browser using these bugs.

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-7425

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-22834

(And, for the record, XSL is Turing-complete. It has xsl:variable, xsl:if, xsl:for-each, and xsl:apply-template function calls.)


Are the security concerns not about libxslt, rather than XSLT?


They are about libxslt but Mason Freed doesn’t want you to know that. They could contribute a rust project which has already implemented XSLT 1.0 thus matching the browsers. But that would good software engineering and logical.


It is not only that ASN.1 was there before SSL, but even the certificate format was there before SSL. The certificate format comes from X.500, which is the "DAP" part of "LDAP", L as in "Lightweight" in "LDAP" refers mostly to LDAP not using public key certificates for client authentication in contrast to X.500 [1]. Bunch of other related stuff comes from RSA's PKCS series specifications, which also mostly use ASN.1.

1] the somewhat ironic part is that when it was discovered that using just passwords for authentication is not enough, the so called "lighweight" LDAP got arguably more complex that X.500. Same thing happened to SNMP (another IETF protocol using ASN.1) being "Simple" for similar reasons.


x.400 and x.500 are the real horrors lurking in PKI/PKIX. Absolute horrors.


Mostly no. You do not see the lower layers and for anything sub 1um or so the resolution is too poor anyway.


The reasoning behind the auto-locking feature is that when the doors are locked it adds to rigidity of the car and thus decreases the likelyhood of the passanger cabin collapsing on the occupants. Auto unlocking the doors would completely defeat the reason for that feature.

The actual mechanism of how the door works as kind of "configurable deformation zone" usually involves somewhat thick steel rod running down the middle of the door that on hinge side abbuts similar strength member in the chasis and on the latch side connects to the latch. The latch has two distinct positions depending on whether the door is just latched or locked and the only latched position is not strong enough to hold the potential impact forces..


Huh! Autolocking behavior has bothered me for as long as I remember seeing it, and I’d love to believe that it improves safety against crashes (rather than notional “bad guys trying to open the door on your journey” or something). It’s only ever inconvenienced me, never helped.

I’m having trouble finding more formal explanations for what you’re describing, though. I see a lot of talk about how the latching behavior links the door’s steel into the rest of the body, but very little about the structural aspects of the locks that link the handles to the latch’s release mechanism.

I’m the farthest thing from a car engineer, but I wonder if you’d know of anyplace I could read more about this structural aspect of locking design? Every time I accidentally lock out a passenger, I get frustrated: I’d find grace and patience easier to muster if I understood how someday it might save both our lives :)


I am also not a car engineer, but from my reading of "Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Door Locks and Door Retention Components" [1] it is the latching that is meant to prevent the door opening, not the locks. However, even many modern cars have a mechanical linkage from the handle to the door. In a crash the mechanical linkage, particularly older style tension-type linkages, could unlatch the door when your body hit the door from the inside and physically moved the linkage [2]. A lot of doors use electric actuators now [3], and linkages are much better designed, but it seems like it could still be an issue, in theory.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/02/06/07-517/...

[2] http://www.autosafetyexpert.com/defect_doorlatch.php

[3] https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2023/10/media-post-actuator-...


> The reasoning behind the auto-locking feature is that when the doors are locked it adds to rigidity of the car

No, this is not the primary reason. The primary reason is safety from potential attack while in a confined, transitional space.

My late grandparents' Lincoln Mark VII non-LSC had autolocking doors when shifting into drive in 1988.


> The specifications document was so long that it would be difficult for anyone else to implement it properly.

In contrast to ODF specification that is long, complex and written in such a terse way that it really does only specify what is a valid ODF file and not in any way what it means. Good luck implementing that without just copying whatever LibreOffice does.


My experience with Dell is that they are not that focused on selling enterprise support (at least compared to HPE), at most they will push for bundling hardware (cables, cable trays, front covers, PERC...) that you do not really need in order to get better volume discount.

Price-wise I don't see a meaningful difference between Dell and SuperMicro (or even "non-traditional" server vendors like Asus and Gigabyte).


Modern protocols running over RS-485 UART usually use some kind of HDLC-inspired framing scheme with flag characters and byte stuffing.

But still there is a lot of stuff that uses ASCII STX/ETX and then some kind of field separators inside otherwise human readable message. Things like industrial scales, industrial barcode readers and what not usually use something like that as default output format.


That is not an overloading, that is just preserving the behavior of Tab on IBM terminals.


The article is somewhat sensationalistic. If you read the actual report you will find out that:

The pilot was not part of the conference call!

What froze was not hydraulic fluid for actuators (in some hydraulic line), but hydraulic fluid in the shock absorbers.

The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words and reads as the investigators blaming the people directly involved, which is essentially a complete opposite of what conclusions of the report say.


If you want to read the actual report, it's not linked from the CNN article, but it's available here:

https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....

Edit: While CNN says the air force blamed the crash on ice in the hydraulic lines, it's obvious that ice can't be legally culpable. The report actually says:

> Additionally, the [Accident Investigation Board] president found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that crew decision making including those on the in-flight conference call, lack of oversight for the Hazardous materials program, and lack of adherence to maintenance procedures for hydraulic servicing were substantially contributing factors.

They note further down that "The 355th FGS hazardous materials program (HAZMAT) program suffered from insufficient manning and frequent supervision changes at times relevant to the mishap." Basically, they had a barrel of hydraulic oil that sat outside and no one took care of it.

Also interesting is the 6 February 2025 incident, where another aircraft, barely a week after the one that crashed, had the same issue. They tested it inside a heated hangar, then outside in the 15F cold where they reproduced the weight-on-wheels sensor malfunctions, then brought it back in and drained the hydraulic fluid...there's a TON of water in those lines! I'm more familiar with industrial hydraulics in factories and earth-moving equipment, not with aviation...but we have water separators because a few drops of water can be enough to mess with the servo valves when you're near caviation limits. "...approximately one third of the fluid retrieved from the [landing gear] was water" is NOT RIGHT.

Also, I chuckled on reading "...the barrel tested with more than 1024 parts per million (ppm) particulates, which is more than double the allowable limit for particulates in hydraulic fluid... It is important to note that the test does not accurately measure contaminates above 1024ppm, so the contamination was potentially far greater than 1024ppm"

Gives strong "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" vibes!


Of note to readers not familiar with hydraulic fluid, it is hygroscopic:

>Passenger safety requires that in commercial airplanes hydraulic actuators be powered by fire-resistant hydraulic fluids. As a downside, such fluids are hygroscopic which means that these tend to accumulate humidity from the environment

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9040/8/4/131


The hygroscopic nature of hydraulic fluid is there for the same reason it is in car brake fluid-

it's better to evenly distribute water throughout the fluid, than to have it accumulate in a low point


That's actually a really cool way to deal with that problem!


It is. Right up until you go to hit your brakes hard and it all boils out and removes your ability to apply brake pressure in an emergency and you had no idea how much water was in your line because there's no easy way to check, like a low spot with a sight glass.

Or if you leave a barrel of hydraulic fluid outside until it is partially water and it's not easy to notice when you are handling it.


Can't agree at all about a sight glass. The lowest point in nearly every brake system is the brake calipers themselves. Wheels going to make it difficult anyways on a car. Not to mention the risk of a rock striking and damaging rigid glass. Or the old interface that's sealing the glass to the calipers wearing out and causing a leak.

It's not worth the expense to manufacture and it's not worth the risk. Not when a litre of DOT4 is $20 and that only needs replacing every 3 years at an aggressive schedule for passenger cars.

Larger vehicles you can purchase a brake fluid tester, but most of the really large ones I know use air brakes anyways.


I think my mental model of hydraulic brakes is too simple. Where is there a low pressure region in a brake line? When I stomp on the brakes, isn't the working part of the hydraulic system going to be at higher pressure?


There isn't a low pressure braking region in the brakes.

But brakes can get really hot. Passenger brakes can easily get over the boiling point of water. Keep braking long enough and adding enough heat, and they'll get over the boiling point of brake fluid under pressure.

Thing is, brake fluid is incompressible. Brake fluid vapor however is very much so a compressible gas. Even more so: the water in the brake fluid has an even lower boiling point then that.

So stomping on the braking quickly isn't going to cause much of a problem. But if your riding the brakes down hill for a long distance with 12 year old brake fluid in hot Florida summer on very heavily loaded car? That... might get you into a spot of trouble.


I take your general point, but as per your specific example, it’s not really possible to go downhill for long distances when the high point of the state is 345 feet.


I've gone down the Sonora grade in a Silverado with 22 year old brake fluid. I wasn't towing, but it was very hot out and in general yes the brakes were hot when I checked at around 4000 feet.

I wonder if some YouTuber has done some experiment to see just how bad fluid had to get before a typical driver could notice.


have you considered a career as an F35 pilot? :-)


The one piece of good news is the highest point in Florida is just 345 feet above sea level so I think they'll be okay. :)


Thanks for breaking that down. None of that surprises me and it's basically what I was expecting. This report gives a glimpse into the reality of the US military behind the propaganda facade and the massive margins for error stuffed with money.


>it's obvious that ice can't be legally culpable

well, why not? we need a good politician to make it illegal for ice to form on an airplane, that would fix the whole thing. also, make it illegal to ever get sick. Checkmate, human illness.


> Gives strong "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible" vibes!

What?


In the Chernobyl TV series, they think they see a high but (short term) tolerable amount of radiation. It was actually just the upper limit of the measurement hardware and the real value was much higher.


And they're told it's the upper limit of the detectors, but choose to ignore that and take 3.6 as the gospel truth actual value.

It's a mockery of Soviet politics and party loyalty, but many of the errors apply to all bureaucracies.


Like my continuous glucose monitor.


> The article is somewhat sensationalistic

somewhat sensationalistic?! The article clearly tries to give the impression the pilot was on the call:

> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected

Knowing the quality of media these days, it wouldn't surprise me if it CNN just got it really wrong, but also wouldn't surprise me they'd do some brazen lie for clicks.

Edit: Reading the report, it seems like you, dear fellow HN commentator, got it wrong in this case, sorry to say :) Seems indeed the pilot itself was on the call:

> The mishap pilot (MP), assigned to the 354th FW, ejected safely before impact. [...] The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers. The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action

Page 35 from https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....


You omitted an important part of the sentence (in italics below):

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

So it was the SOF on the conference call, relaying information to and from the pilot over the radio. This is more clear if you read the sequence of events on pages 7-10.

Not that it makes that much of a difference. Either way, he's up there waiting for the engineers on the ground to troubleshoot the problem.


Confusingly enough, there are these two parts in the previously linked document:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers. The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action - Page 35

And

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action - Page 2

I quoted from the Page 35, you quoted from the Page 2, not confusing at all of them to have very similar stuff with slightly different meaning, all in the same document :) Thanks nonetheless for the additional context!


SOF initiates Conference Hotel procedures, FYI. It's a (rarely used) checklist in their book. SOF is the pilot sitting in the tower to liase with ATC and handle emergencies from an ops perspective.


To the uninitiated: SOF is Supervisor of Flying.


Classic DoD with its overloaded acronyms. I first read the sentence thinking "what does this have to do with Special Operations Forces"?


> Classic DoD with its overloaded acronyms.

What does Depth of Discharge have to do with anything?


Thanks!


Prepared By: The Boeing Company Field Service Technical Support (Aircraft Information) Aviation Life Support Systems (Crew Rescue Information) Please contact your local Boeing Field Service Office for additional information or copies of this booklet.

Boeing has an emergency response program called “Conference Hotel” (USAF) or called “Conference X-Ray” (USN/USMC) to provide units with engineering and test pilot expertise during airborne emergencies. This 24 hour a day service is available by calling (866)543-5### toll free or commercial (314) 232-9###. Callers may also contact the regional DSN operator at DSN 693-1### and ask to be connected to the Boeing STL operator at (314) 232-9###. It can also be used overseas via long distance phone lines or MARS radio patches. When the Boeing operator answers, callers must identify themselves and request Conference Hotel or Conference X-Ray assistance. The operator will ask for specific information to identify the appropriate Boeing personal to respond. Conference Hotel or Conference X-Ray is available to assist in airborne emergencies only. Do not utilize this capability as a part of pre-mishap drills.

F/A-18E/F Aircraft Crash Rescue; Fire Fighting Information; January 2006


I think there's just some nuance to the scenario. The pilot wasn't directly on the call, but was participating in the call with the flight supervisor relaying the information.

I'd compare it to being in the room with someone on a conference phone call and they're relaying the conversation to you and them both ways. I would still say you were participating in the call even though you weren't directly on the call.

Also, he did initiate the call so "F-35 pilot held" is imprecise, but not totally wrong. Either way, the pilot was in an active tech support session with the plane engineers, making this one of the most intense tech support calls in history.


dang, I was looking forward to reading about the same F150 CarPlay and MS Teams being available in f35.


And, of course, CNN only links to their own articles. Why bother linking to the actual report? The rise in sites that only link to themselves 99% of the time really frustrates me.


Journalism's failure to adopt linking to sources etc in the internet age is kind of infuriating. I get it, back in physical newspaper/magazine days, linking wasn't possible, and it takes a while for new norms to change and habits to form, but articles have been internet-first for well over a decade at this point. It should be completely unacceptable not to have linking to sources whenever relevant. I'm not sure I have ever found a news article that makes finding the original source or subject of the article easy. Certainly not on mainstream news outlets.


Sites with no external linking are like highways with no exits.


Backed up, slow, and avoided by those familiar with the area?


If you link to something external the eyeballs leave and that's undesirable.


They complain about how social media links to them, while they are equally guilty of link shenanigans


It’s infuriating because, when debating, we’re asked to cite our sources.

We’d like to cite sources but journalists don’t cite theirs.

Now consider this: When you know journalists are spreading a lie, you can show the article and the scientific study which says the opposite, because people always claim that it isn’t the study cited by the article.

Case in point: I remember this article from the BBC titled “It’s proven, women are smarter than men. [In a scientific study about multitasking, …]”

The scientific paper published the month before on the same subject had an abstract that finished with “…, therefore we cannot conclude that women are smarter than men.”

I was particularly angry because it participated to the 2017 wave, and it was about multitasking, and once again it said women are 5s faster on a 170s task (with 15s stddev), but the study didn’t underline the accuracy of the two tasks in parallel, which was worse for women than men.

Anybody who mocks me about competing with girls, should respond why the BBC need to publish a petty news article about women being smarter.


> Journalism's failure to adopt linking to sources etc in the internet age is kind of infuriating.

Possibly my greatest disappointment with the internet.


If they’re not providing essential links then it’s not journalism. They shouldn’t be given credit for a title they are not earning.

If you pet barks, do you still call it a cat? Of course not.

Links make it journalism. Not linking makes it reporting. They should not be considered synonymous.

The point is, people who should know better keep calling the likes of CNN journalism and those who don’t know any better keep believing they’re consuming content and forming understanding based on journalism.


We're CNN, you trust us right? I mean, why wouldn't you trust us in referring to ourselves? Because, we say so, so you have to believe us.


I read the article (twice) and I still have the impression the pilot was in fact the one in the conference call

Opening line:

> A US Air Force F-35 pilot spent 50 minutes on an airborne conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers trying to solve a problem with his fighter jet before he ejected

Am I illiterate or misreading it?

> After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot got on a conference call with engineers from the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, *as the plane flew near the air base. *

Is this actually some insane weasel-wording by CNN? "We never said the pilot (he is in fact a pilot) was the one flying the jet, we just said 'as the plane flew', not 'as he flew the plane', using passive voice, so we're not wrong - but it was another pilot flying the plane"


From the report:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF)

"MP" is the pilot

> A conference hotel is a call that can be initiated by the SOF to speak directly with Lockheed Martin engineers to discuss an abnormality/malfunction not addressed in the PCL (Tab V-13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 16.1, 17.1). While waiting for the conference hotel to convene, the MP initiated a series of “sturns” with gravitational forces up to 2.5Gs, as well as a slip maneuver (i.e., left stick input with full right rudder pedal) to see if the nose wheel orientation would change (Tabs N-12, BB-201- 02). Upon visual inspection, the MW reported no change to the nose wheel (Tab N-13). The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME)

So the pilot was, in effect, on the call, even if not directly on the phone. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing an F-35 pilot had radio comms with the SOF who was on a phone line. It's a layer of indirection, but the pilot was essentially exchanging info in real time with the conference call. Its not a stretch to colloquially say that the pilot was "in the conference call"


> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

I read this as "The pilot initiated a conference call, but was put on hold [i.e. not actually in the conference call in any meaningful way]." So he was both on and not on the conference call.

The Zen Koan of the Mishap Pilot. Sounds like an Iron Maiden song.


Don't read the article; read the report.


I’m guessing you also didn’t read the report given that he was indeed on the conference call.


One clear indication he was not, from PDF p14 (8 as numbered) ("MP"="mishap pilot"):

"At 21:12:52Z, the SOF informed the MP, “Alright the engineers uh are not optimistic about this COA but, extremely low PK [probability kill, meaning the probability this would fix the issue], but we’re going to try anyway is a touch-and-go on the runway, mains only, do not touch the nose gear, uh lift back off in all cases and have the uh have Yeti 4 reconfirm the nose gear position once your safely airborne.”"

No need for this if the pilot was on the call directly.


From the Report:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

"though the SOF" implies a middle-man, but I imagine that's because you don't want literally hook up a conference call directly to the cockpit. That being said, seems like the pilot was effectively on the conference call.

Unless you want to suggest I don't trust the report?

https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....


What I said is he was not on the call /directly/.

You can argue over whether he was “effectively” on the call because someone was summarizing it for him per what I quoted.

I just think it’s worth nothing he was not “on” the call the way someone is traditionally on a conference call.


Sure, of course I will trust the report as the source of truth.

But I'm interested in the reporting. There are, you know, journalistic standards, which are considered kinda "journalism 101"! For instance, getting the basic facts of a story correct - especially the facts stated in the headline.

So I'm curious, did the reporter do their due diligence, and write the article in a way that is factually correct, but highly misleading? Or did they simply not follow basic reporting protocol?


From the Report:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

Seems accurate to what CNN was reporting. It's simplified a bit, but it's not misleading to me.

I mean, I guess if you want to nit pick and suggest "No the pilot wasn't literally on a phone and there was an intermediary in between" or some such, but the report makes it seem like CNN is accurate.

https://www.pacaf.af.mil/Portals/6/documents/3_AIB%20Report....


I’m curious why you’re getting this worked up when the report is clear that the pilot was part of the information flow in that conference call. This is a really minor case of a headline using less precise language.


The article is standard news stuff. It is sloppy and misleading. The report is what you want.


>But I'm interested in the reporting. There are, you know, journalistic standards, which are considered kinda "journalism 101"! For instance, getting the basic facts of a story correct - especially the facts stated in the headline.

Every single story is like this, every one, and f-them for not linking to the source documents.


> There are, you know, journalistic standards, which are considered kinda "journalism 101"!

Pretty sure you meant to use the past tense here: "There _were_ journalistic standards..."


> There are, you know, journalistic standards

Are there? What are they?


To clarify because everyone is confused here. The report is a little vague and information is buried in a couple places. Using PDF page numbers

> "The MP responded “14.5” ... and then opined a “conference hotel” was appropriate for this situation (Tab N-12)." (pg. 13)

> "The MP, utilizing the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF) in the air traffic control (ATC) tower, initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin (LM)" (pg. 8)

> "The SOF informed the MP he was on the phone with the conference hotel and Lockheed Martin were getting the LG subject matter experts (SME) on the line ...no transcript is available because the call was made on a personal phone rather than the legal voice recorder in the air traffic control tower" (pg. 13)

in the last statement, he means that the SOF was informing the MP that the SOF was on the conference call and would relay information. The mishap pilot (MP) was speaking to the supervisor of flying (SOF), almost certainly via radio. He asked the SOF, in the control tower to set up a conference call. For reasons, maybe of expediency or technical failure, or norms or something, the SOF made that call on his personal cell phone. The MP was not 'on the phone' but the SOF would have primaily functioned as a relay between radio and phone. The purpose of the call was to get information from the pilot to the engineers and from the engineers to the pilot. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate* means he doesn't need to cognitive load of actually listening as the SOF and engineers think through what to do and decide on a plan. He needs to fly the plane and provide information necessary to help figure out how to aviate.

If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.

I suspect that in the non-public version of this report there is more discussion of the decision and alternatives to doing that call on a personal cell phone for two reasons. (1) As noted in the report it means that conference isn't recorded and a transcript is not available to the investigators (thats shocking to me). (2) Detailed aircraft systems information, which is highly controlled, is being discussed on an open line.

* Funny enough, the third time the report defines SOF, they have a typo "supervisor of lying" (pg. 36)


> If you want to harp on CNN for accuracy, I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities but this feels pedantic. It is like saying 'the astronauts weren't talking to mission control, they were talking to the capcom. Only the capcom talked to mission control'.

Um, actually, they were talking to a mic. And the mic converted the noise... /s

But yeah, excellent comment here.


I’m sorry but it’s not noise its an electrical signal

(This argument also failed to convince my mom my teenage band didn’t suck)


> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

basically that and the knoll's law on media accuracy:

> Knoll’s law of media accuracy is the adage that “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.


Knoll's law, I'll remember this.


> The pilot was not part of the conference call!

Thank you. If I cannot even trust one of the substantial parts of the headline to be true, then my interest to read or even care about such an article is reduced to almost zero.


"After going through system checklists in an attempt to remedy the problem, the pilot got on a conference call with engineers from the plane’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as the plane flew near the air base."

Did I misread that? I thought it meant an air-to-ground call, which I suppose is not that unheard of: I've definitely seen air accident videos saying the pilots were trying to debug in the air with engineers in the loop.

*edit: never mind, I misunderstood your comment. I thought you meant the article was clickbait.


Still interesting part is: them trying to fix the problem - made the plane crash.

Of course it couldn’t land but still, tweaking stuff while flying was ultimately causing loss of control.


The report actually says it could have landed. A week later, another F35 at the same base had the same problem, it landed with its nose gear 6 degrees off center and the pilot barely noticed.

Basically, Lockheed Martin engineers told the air force to attempt re-centering with touch-and-go landings, but didn't realize that this could mess with the weight-on-wheels sensors and cause it to switch flight modes.


I’ve always wondered why weight on wheel modes don’t have more checks, detecting weight on wheels but seeing 150+ Indicated Air speed and RALT is greater then 15ft, maybe issue caution instead of screwing with flight mode.


Yeah, they put too much faith in their sensors. Too many planes have crashed because of blind reliance on sensors that sometimes fail. Cross check whether things make sense before doing potentially catastrophic actions.

And don't skimp on the maintenance budget. Sounds like they had too much to do, too few people to do it, leading to not taking proper care.


There's value in simplicity. Every decision that a flight computer makes is based on a leaky abstraction of the world, and it's important to be able to reason about those states without excessive complexity.

If a programmer, engineer, or pilot needs to think about when the aircraft will transition to "on ground" mode, and the answer is "when the weight on wheels sensors say the landing gear is not fully extended", that's simple. You can even extend this to reason about what might happen when the landing gear is not fully extended, or what happens if it does a belly crash-landing with the gear not deployed, or if it hops, etc. Furthermore, it's a perpetual signal, rather than an edge-triggered condition: You don't have to develop and remember and think about a state machine that transitions to the on-ground state, or worry about what happens if the flight computer gets reset, you can check the sensor state at any instant.

Yes, there are a myriad of checks and alternate modes you could do, or information items you could communicate to the pilot - radar altimeters, GPS altimeters, barometric altimeters, indicated airspeed, speed over the ground, weight on wheels, landing gear deployment, accelerometer/gyro/IMU history, stick position, flight model response to control inputs, brake response, ABS wheel speed sensors (if they have those, which I doubt), cameras...the list goes on.

With more data, you can potentially be more accurate if one or more sensors malfunctions. "Aircraft On Ground" could actually mean the aircraft is on the ground, rather than the abstract state that occurs when the weight-on-wheels sensors say the landing gear is not fully extended. But the more complexity you add, the more it gets difficult to understand!

I deal with this all the time - I'm an industrial controls engineer, working with robots and CNCs and assembly equipment rather than aircraft. But the machines still need to reason about the world. It's an important judgement, borne out of years of experience, to decide when you need to have a laser distance sensor or inductive proximity switch that confirms the part is present in the fixture. Sometimes you can reason about it and assert that if the part was in the previous fixture and the machine cycled, it must be in the new fixture, sometimes you need to put together multiple sensors or live information like CNC spindle torque to confirm that you're actually cutting steel. But usually, when you've got an operator or maintenance tech 600 miles away, looking at the machine you programmed 2 years ago, calling on the phone to ask why the machine is stuck on "Step 34: Wait for Part Present in Fixture B, then start CNC job O312" (or conversely, why it's skipping past this check and cutting air if the sensor is covered in swarf) everyone involved in reasoning about this equipment for the next decade would rather it be just a digital part present sensor.

This works in industrial automation where you can demand that the equipment's environment be precisely controlled, I'm less convinced that it will work well in fly-by-wire aircraft or (more pertinent to the average human) in level 3/4 self-driving cars. Simplicity has value, complexity adds cost..but is this cost worth the risk when there's a pilot who now has a thoracic spine fracture or a pedestrian crossing the road? I don't know.


Great comment.


Not being able to do a touch-and-go without crashing afterwards seems like a significant flaw in the aircraft.

Isn't there an arrested-landing equipped version of the F35? Could this same problem happen with a bolter?


The mishap involves doing touch-and-go twice with an arrested landing capable version of the aircraft. The report even says that they considered doing arrested landing, but it was deemed as too much risk for the pilot (apparently the actual flight manual of F-35A advises against trying that with non-centered NLG), because the ways how that could go horribly wrong do not allow for safe ejection.


"The pilot was not part of the conference call!"

So, from the actual report:

> The MP initiated a conference call with Lockheed Martin engineers through the on-duty supervisor of flying (SOF). The MA held for approximately 50 minutes while the team developed a plan of action.

Seems like he was at some level a part of the conference call. Even if they are on hold, it still sounds like they were a part of it at some level. Seems reasonable to me.


The call was being relayed to the pilot by the flight supervisor. While he wasn't "on" the call, I think it's fair to say he was "part" of the call. He's still getting live tech support and trying to trouble shoot the plane while flying it. He had an intermediary but I don't think that totally changes the scenario.


The last paragraph of the article and seems to be missing a few words

Something, something, mote in your neighbor's eye, mumble, something...



Sounds like the sensationalistic and woefully inaccurate media reporting of the MAX crashes.


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