I'll make a prediction: There will be more crashes.  The next one, post "retrofit", will end the company.

(Reuters) - A review by a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration panel into Boeing Co’s grounded 737 MAX aircraft found a planned software update and training revisions to be “operationally suitable,” the agency said Tuesday, an important milestone in getting the planes back in the air.

You can't fix the problems the 737Max has with software alone.

First, the limits of authority for the MCAS system are entirely inappropriate.  An aircraft that needs an "anti-stall" feature that can consume half of the stabilizer trim authority with one actuation is horribly unbalanced.  The design is dangerous.

The 0.6 degree original design is reasonable; the revision to 2.5 degrees is not.  Rather than find the reason(s) for the requirement to quadruple that authority and correct them in the design so the 0.6 degree authority is sufficient Boeing intentionally concealed that authority change from the FAA.

This is the root of the issue.

When you're off by 400% in your engineering predictions, as disclosed by testing, you have a dangerous situation.  The correct thing to do in such a circumstance is to go back, figure out why that happened and change whatever you need to so it doesn't happen anymore.  That would have meant a redesign of material components of the 737MAX (likely involving flight surfaces such as the wing geometry itself, where it's attached to the aircraft, etc) which Boeing was unwilling to do for time and cost reasons; today it would likely mean literal scrapping of all the existing hulls and starting over.  That's not going to happen either as today it might well bankrupt the company.

The reason for this set of facts is quite simple -- there is a set of both probabilities and outcomes that either fall into or outside of the window of acceptability for a transport aircraft.  A failure will lead to discomfort but not death (of anyone) is one you can accept occurring, since nobody dies and at worst it causes inconvenience.

One that could kill some number of people (but not crash the airplane) is much more-severe.

One that can crash the airplane is the most-severe.

The problem with all of these as the FAA defines them is that there is also a probability table associated with them.  This is a fundamental ****-up in the FAA's legal mandate and it must be changed.

Let me give you an example of the complete horse**** that MTBF and "error rate" figures present to people:

Furthermore, Deskstar NAS hard drives incorporate a rotational vibration sensor and achieve reliability of 1M hours MTBF.

One millions hours MTBF (that is, the mean time between failures) is the common specification for computer hard drives.

There are 8,760 hours in a year.  This means that if you have one such disk you should expect it to last, on average, 114 years, far longer than you will.

This abuse of statistics is utter and complete horse****.  First, a disk drive is a mechanical thing.  Like all mechanical things that have moving parts in it the parts wear when used.  Specifically, the mechanism that positions the heads has moving parts that can wear (get "sloppy") and so does the motor that drives the platters (the "disks" inside.)  Neither will last 114 years while operating under any rational set of conditions, ever, period.

So let's say you have 100 of these drives.  Well now, see, the probability isn't that each will likely last 114 years.  No, and no.  It's that the manufacturer predicts that if you have 100 of them you'll lose about 1.1 of them every year.  And guess what -- most of these fail at somewhere around, or perhaps a bit better, than those numbers. Nobody seriously expects the one disk you buy to last 114 years, and it won't.  You can count on that.

1 in a million is 1 x 10^-6.  This sounds very improbable but in fact as you can see it really isn't at all.

There's a lot of engineering judgement that goes into these analysis and the severity that will follow.  The original MCAS design was permitted because with only 0.6 degree of authority it was judged that if it failed it would not crash the plane.  Quadrupling the authority without re-analyzing the outcome was intentional -- even if by omissions -- because under the rules any modification that may impact severity must be re-analyzed.

Making the system less-likely to make a mistake (e.g. by forcing the use of both AOA sensors, for example) does not solve the problem in the general sense -- because it can't.

This is the comment I have just transmitted to the FAA on their coddling of both Boeing and willful dereliction of duty and disregard of the FARs governing transport aircraft by proposing to "accept" Boeing's changes:

Gentlemen;

The 737MAX "software revision" is, as has been described in publicly-available documents, insufficient as a fix for the root cause of the two crashes and loss of more than 300 lives that occurred.

During the original design of the MAX it has been disclosed that the MCAS system was implemented into the flight control "law" software to alleviate a materially-larger "pitch up" moment that could arise as a result of the larger, higher-bypass engines fitted to the MAX series of aircraft.  The original specifically called for this software to have 0.6 degrees of stabilizer trim authority and the failure consequences and probabilities were analyzed on that basis.

Flight testing before certification disclosed that 2.5 degrees, or approximately half of the total range from neutral to the stop in either direction for the stabilizer trim jackscrew, was actually required for MCAS to perform the desired function.  In addition the data recorder graphs from the Ethiopian crash appear to show that MCAS is capable of, and does, drive the jackscrew at roughly double the rate of a yoke command from the pilots, making its application of negative ("nose down") trim extremely violent on a comparative basis with that applied by the pilots.

This change was not reflected back into the design documents and failure analysis, including both probability and outcomes from failures, was thus not performed with this 400% increase in automated command authority.

Had that analysis been re-run it would have disclosed, as we now know from the two hull losses, that an unrecoverable aircraft attitude at moderate altitudes (< 10,000 AGL) could occur due to erroneous activation of the system.  Two such failures did occur and in at least one, it has been disclosed that the checklist was run for that failure by the pilot and first officer and failed to restore the aircraft to controllable flight.

Patching the software, assuming the 2.5 degree limit of authority remains as it is required for the MCAS system to function, cannot resolve the root issue.  While improving the reliability of sensor input (e.g. by requiring both sensors to be "always hot" and, if there is a disagreement, not engaging MCAS) at first blush appears to be sufficient to remove the failure mode, it is not and accepting same as a sufficient remedy must not be allowed.

The 737NG, from the published manual pages and block diagrams I have been sent copies of, appears to show that all flight computer access to the stabilizer trim runs through only the right side disconnect switch for stabilizer trim.  The 737MAX emergency procedure that the pilots in the Ethiopian Air crash used, however, specifies that both switches are to be pulled in the event of a runaway and remain off for the remainder of the flight.  This strongly implies that on the MAX aircraft computer trim authority can be exerted if even only the left-side, or "master", stabilizer trim power switch is on.

Since we have had demonstrated twice that loss of ability to operate stabilizer trim can and will result in the loss of the hull and significant or all life onboard it is not acceptable for there to be any operational part of the flight envelope, where the aircraft remains intact and controllable, that leaves the pilots with no means of adjusting stabilizer trim without an outside direction, in this case an insane computer irrespective of the root cause of the machine's insanity, overriding their input.

Ethiopian's crash documented by the CVR that the checklist procedure, which called for the handwheel operation of the trim in the event of a runaway, was inoperative due to aerodynamic forces the pilots could not manually crank against.

This is not acceptable and software fixes cannot resolve a hardware problem.

Assuming MCAS or any other part of the flight computer complex requires sufficient stabilizer trim authority to place the airframe in jeopardy should it malfunction it must be able to be disconnected from said system.  Since functional stabilizer trim adjustment is required for the aircraft to be airworthy under all conditions of the flight envelope there must always be two operational means of changing same.  MCAS is by no means the only possible failure in said flight control system; not only is that software highly-complex and has other stabilizer-trim functionality (e.g. mach variation, autotrim related to flap position, etc) it has both sensor input and physical output (e.g. power FETs to drive the output circuits, contractors, etc) which can fail as well, some of which are single-path failure points.

Therefore, at minimum the following is required:

1. The flight control computer, including but not limited to MCAS, must be able to be disconnected from the stabilizer trim electrical drive circuit without impacting the electrical trim switches on the command yokes.  The NG block diagram appears to show that this is the case, while the MAX emergency procedure strongly implies otherwise.  Either the MAX procedure is wrong and must be corrected or the physical wiring in the MAX must be modified so that the flight control computer can be positively severed from stabilizer electrical trim control by disconnecting the right-side switch, leaving the master enabled and the yoke switches available.

2. Due to the fact that stabilizer trim must always be able to be modified at all times in the flight envelope under pilot command for the aircraft to remain controllable a condition where the manual trim wheels are inoperative due to aerodynamic loads is unacceptable.  Therefore a second minimum change is for the gearing ratio to be modified such that under any set of flight conditions where catastrophic hull damage has not yet occurred the hand cranks must be able to be actually operated by any person of sufficient physical capacity to have either a pilot or first officer flight certificate.

To return the 737MAX to certified status before both of these changes are implemented is, in my opinion as a person who has been writing software for approximately 30 years, including embedded software that controls potentially dangerous machinery, unwise and appears to be in violation of the FARs governing transport aircraft.  Such a decision is, in my opinion, likely to result in additional lost hulls and loss of life.

I have no faith that the FAA will in fact insist on the above two changes, as both cost money and involve physical, not software modifications.  However, absent both the 737MAX will remain 100% reliant on its flight control computer never suffering insanity irrespective of cause, failure of which has a high probability of killing everyone on board.

Read this article carefully.

We have unprecedented levels of low unemployment in America. It could even be said that we really have too many jobs and not enough people to fill them. While this currently isn’t a problem, it will soon have devastating impacts on our nation’s economic stability, and the only answer is to increase immigration to America.

In the past 60 years, the birthrate in the United States has decreased by over 50 percent and is only falling faster. This is not by design.

There are multiple factors contributing to this trend: people are getting married later and having kids later in life, women are focusing on their careers more than ever before, and contraception has become more effective.

All of these causes make one thing clear: the declining birthrate shows no sign of stopping.

Well gee, so you think this is just about women marrying later and having kids later in life?

Are women focusing on their careers or being forced to in order to eat?

Yes, contraception has become more effective -- that's good rather than bad.  I presume you don't think a high abortion rate is good, yes?  Oh wait -- we have that too.  How effective is that contraception you flaunt so daringly?

Why don't you take a big mug of STFU, quaff it and sit down, jackass.

America (and the rest of the western world) has spent the last fifty plus years doing all of the following:

• Punishing men for choosing to have children.  That's right -- punishing.  If you're a man there is literally no possible way for you to secure the right to raise your own kids.  Even if you have billions you can't get there from here.  You have better odds if you have money and your wife (or paramour) decides to cut you out of the picture but most of the time you get both severely restricted in your ability to raise said kids and you get the whole bill.  You don't think that situation, which the "feminists" cooked up and rammed down everyone's throats might make men who are intelligent, skilled and desirous of a family think twice about making children, do you?
  
  
• Punishing women for choosing to have children.  That's right -- punishing.  If you're a woman how often do you hear the bull**** about you can have it all, chick! -- career, motherhood, etc?  How many kids are in daycare instead of home and why does daycare exist if this is true?  Oh by the way, how do you pay for said daycare and how many hours out of the waking day do you spend raising said kids?  Well under half.  What the hell sort of message does that send -- that you're a walking uterus and once you crank out that baby it'll take a village!  Oh Hitlery, cry me a ****ing river you evil five-alarm bitch. Not one woman in a thousand can pull the **** you and your spawn got away with.  If you think this is some grand voluntary set of choices for 99.99% of women in America go visit all those women who don't have much in the way of choice at all; that would be damned near all of them.  It's not like the "zero inflation, high productivity" world we live in and have for the last 50 years, according to the government, has made it trivial for a single-earner, two parent household to buy a house, put food in the fridge, keep the water and power on and pay for the trip to the doctor when the juniors get the sniffles has it?  Why do you think we have all those abortions taking place *******?

You think people don't respond to incentives?  The hell they don't.

You think a woman chooses to have an abortion when she can reasonably choose to have and raise the child instead?  What sort of bullcrap is that?  You think the 16, 18, 20 or 25 year old woman created the societal circumstances we live in today -- the near-requirement for two good incomes among a couple to raise a kid in most metropolitan areas of the nation, $100,000 college tuition bills, $10,000+ property tax bills, $20,000 per year family "health insurance" policy costs and more?  Schools that are diverse but where half the ****ing High School "graduates" can't write a basic business letter, balance a checkbook or make change for a $20 in their head?

Did said young woman -- or young man -- get a vote on that property tax bill?  Did they get to choose whether their teacher was minimally competent in basic mathematics?  Did they have a voice -- any voice whatsoever -- in the crap that was stuffed in their heads for the previous 20 years?

Who created, promoted and continues that pattern today?  The power structure in our government does and nearly all of it is felony-level fraud from top to bottom.

The article points out that Medicare and Medicaid currently spend $1.3 trillion a year.  Uh, gee, someone else has read the MTS -- the government's official general ledger!  Fancy that.

What that article doesn't point out is that the tax rate on Medicare covers less than a third of the Medicare spending and zero of Medicaid!

Oh by the way -- that omission isn't an accident.

Social Security isn't the problem -- it's running a small (about 15%) cash deficit and can be reasonably fixed by either raising the cap on FICA tax, modestly increasing the tax rate or some combination of the two, along with getting all the able-bodied fraudsters (there are a lot of them) off SSDI.  Likely half of those on SSDI can work -- they just choose not to because they're not highly-skilled and all-in they figure it's better to sit around on their ass and blow the government check on booze, drugs or both.

Medicare and Medicaid, when those programs were put in place, lived in a world when health care was 3-4% of GDP -- that is, 3-4% of the economy.  Despite the greatest improvement in technology the world has ever seen over the last 50 or so years, which is the definition of productivity and which should have dropped that percentage of the economy by half or thereabouts instead medical care has increased as a percentage of GDP by more than five hundred percent and every damn bit of it is directly a result of the government -- and it wasn't an accident, it was done intentionally.

If we lived in a nation where the Rule of Law meant anything every single member of said government and all of those involved in same would have long been indicted, tried, convicted and hung.  There would be a literal gallows on the National Mall.

This is all fraud and felony and it has utterly destroyed, along with the bull**** run by Marxists, some of whom claim to be "feminists", the incentives for people to have children.  As a direct result intelligent men and women are choosing not to.

Rather than solve those problems and re-create said incentives this jackass in the referenced article and many just like her of both sexes instead propose to import tens of millions of stupid, uneducated and illiterate people.

Why do they have to be stupid, uneducated and illiterate?

Because if you import educated and intelligent people they won't make any children either -- they can and will figure out that their kids, should they choose to have them, are overwhelmingly at odds of getting screwed and thus you've gained nothing.

So instead all the various thugs and felons who infest both think tanks and government propose to and actively do import a bunch of people who can't add 2 + 2 or, much worse, who intend to use a penis and vagina as a means of forcibly overthrowing our representative government over time, installing a religious caliphate in its place.

Medicaid, I remind you, in states that have "capitated" same spends about $700/month per person.  If you import a stupid and uneducated person and allow them to have legal status they will place over $8,400 a year on the government in the form of spending instantly and forever just on this one program alone.  If said person can make $10 or even $15/hour they'll never pay anywhere near that $8,400 in taxes annually and that ignores the rest of the tax expenditures (e.g. school costs for the kids they bring in with them or make once here, SNAP, WIC, Section 8 housing, EITC and more.) 

You cannot get out of this box via immigration and attempting it will simply speed up the collapse.

The short term answer is to break all the medical monopolies and start throwing people in prison for violating the law.  This, by the way, isn't a choice because those stupid, uneducated and illiterate people are incapable of earning enough income to pay a material amount of tax in excess of that which they consume in government services.  It's true that said people pay taxes (e.g. if you rent a place to live you pay property taxes in your rent just as certainly as you do if you buy a house) but in terms of their total tax contribution .vs. government outlays it is either neutral or negative, and in terms of Medicare and Medicaid it is deeply negative.

Breaking the medical monopolies will halt the collapse immediately and it is the only means of doing so.  This is not politics -- it's math and there is no escaping mathematics.

2024 is not far away folks and the nasty is that close.  Those aren't my numbers they're the government's numbers.

Longer term the solution is found in fixing the incentive structure in this nation so that:

• Both sexes (yes, there are only two) who desire families can pair off and be reasonably certain they will be able to raise their children even if something goes wrong in their adult relationship.  This means a complete upending of how divorce, custody and child support work in the United States.  There are answers to this problem that do not require a return to the 1950s paradigm; there were serious injustices then but what we have now is worse as intelligent members of both sexes are literally choosing to commit slow genocide by choice rather than create children that they know will have no reasonable hope of a decent future.  We either fix this on a legal level or we will never have educated, intelligent couples choosing to have more than a replacement level of children.  Period.
  
  
• The lie of "low inflation" and "great standards of living" has to be turned into a truth.  This means the destruction of monopolist and cost-of-living jacking practices across the board so that virtually any couple can have one person go earn a living and the second raise kids at home.  It has to work everywhere in the United States, not just if you're able to earn $200,000+ a year in a city or $100 large in the suburbs and rural areas.  Chief among the cost-push problems are those imposed by the medical scam but the issue does not solely lie there.  Teacher, police, fire and other public-sector unions must be destroyed outright; they are largely responsible for the insane cost-of-living ramp via embedded and hidden taxes and fees that drive up everyone's cost of living.  Even FDR, a staunch socialist, said that public-employee unions were unacceptable and needed to be banned.  The reason for this is clear: An adversarial negotiation, which wage and working conditions always is, cannot take place if one side of the table can vote the other side out of office and replace them!  Every one of these unions is by definition an instrument of financial******and fraud and anyone maintaining or attempting to maintain them needs to go to prison -- or be tried and hung.

No, those changes aren't going to come in a day.  But then again neither will fixing demographics.  It requires at minimum 20 years to start to fix a demographic shift since that's how long it takes to choose to have a kid, make the kid and raise the kid!

Demographics is destiny and the fact of the matter is that unless we provide incentives for intelligent and educated people in this country to produce at least a replacement rate of children there is no long-term solution; said educated and intelligent people will disappear as a result of their own choices.  Unless you intend to imitate Genghis Khan and start raping women as he did you have only incentives to work with; there is no forcible way forward that government can elect.

Importing people who are unintelligent and uneducated only makes the problem worse and also invites into our nation those who would, under that guise, use their reproductive capabilities to destroy the very foundation of this nation by breeding a huge number of people who have no respect for representative government, no intention of assimilating and every intention of, when their numbers are numerous enough, overthrowing said government and our Representative Republic by force.

Grrrr....

Hindman:   Americans know they need to plan for their later years and get their affairs in order, especially as retirement approaches. But while people recognize that need, too many aren’t following through and taking action.

When someone passes without a will, it means they have died “intestate” – meaning the intestacy laws of the state where they reside will determine how the property is distributed upon your death. But without clear direction on how you would like critical items like financial assets, property, personal possessions and items of emotional value distributed among loved ones, confusion and disarray are a common end result. Not only does the lack of a will create turmoil and headaches – both financial and emotional – for family members; it heightens the risk that your end-of-life preferences won’t be carried out in accordance with your wishes. On the other hand, a well-prepared legacy can give you the simple and satisfying peace of mind of knowing that you’ve done what you can to organize your life, shape your legacy and leave your family with a roadmap of your preferences. It can be one of the greatest final gifts we leave to those we love.

Yes, you should have your affairs in order.

But I really dislike self-interested jackasses peddling crap -- and this falls into that category.

First, there are plenty of people who need no Will at all.  If you have little or nothing in terms of assets, or intend to die broke and have no minor children then a Will is not only a waste of time it is functionally worthless.  In fact in that situation whoever you name as Executor (Personal Representative in some states) would be five-alarm stupid to accept the job and file the Will with the courts because there's nothing to get but once you file there are both costs and responsibilities.  In other words if you know you will either die broke or in the hole and have no minor children then save the money.

You should still have a durable power of attorney and advance directive; those are to some extent state-specific depending on where you live, in an attempt to have what you want to happen actually happen when it comes to you being flat on your back and unable to make decisions.  Make damn sure said advance directive is on file with all the hospitals and other places you might be taken if you collapse without warning; until said place has it and knows they have it they'll do whatever the hell they want and maybe, but not necessarily, whatever someone who identifies as one of your next-of-kin wants.  If this isn't what you want it's bad news and the cost of that, if any, will wind up billed to your estate which your estate will be obligated to pay.  So if you do only one thing make it that advance directive and put it on file at all the local hospitals.

Warning: Some people will tell you to put someone else on your accounts.  If you are offered this, to be a "second signer" or "co-owner" do not accept unless you are that person's spouse, in which case it is (of course) perfectly ok.  The reason to refuse is that if they do something stupid you are fully responsible legally and financially, and this can ruin you instantly.  Consider someone who has brokerage account and is short at the margin limit of a company that gets taken out and the stock doubles.  They will come after your house!  Don't do it.

A power of attorney gives you the ability to take care of business while the other person is alive without that risk and is the correct instrument; there are several forms of that from very limited ones for a specific asset or account and specific directives all the way to a general durable power of attorney that is extremely broad and essentially gives the person who holds it the same rights as the principal.  Just be aware it turns into a pumpkin instantly upon the principal's death and if you are holding one it is a civil and in some cases criminal offense to self-deal or otherwise screw the principal who gave it to you.

If you have or expect to have assets, or in the instance where you have minor children then a Will is appropriate.  Just understand its limitations and do it the right way to minimize them.

Specifically, get anything worthwhile out of the Will and thus out of probate.  This will make your heirs happier as it's faster, cheaper and has a near-perfect capability to have happen exactly what you wish so long as that's legal.

The first thing to consider is that for anything that doesn't trigger gift tax issues (e.g. things worth under $14,000 in total to a single person, but perhaps of immense sentimental value) give it to the people who you want to have it while you're still alive -- but before you're on your deathbed.  This is very unlikely to be challenged and if it is the person challenging it will be forced to spend money on a legal case with no monetary reward.

When you die with or without a Will but with some assets subject to probate then "someone" has to file with the probate court.  If you do not have a Will then whatever is subject to probate is distributed based on state law; there's a table they go down (e.g. "spouse first, then any direct descendant children, then ..... and on and on until the category fills.)  A Will overrides this to any extent you wish and nominates one or more people (in a chain, if the first refuses or is dead, etc) to be the Personal Representative (or "Executor" in some states; same thing, different names depending on the state.)

However, as soon as that Will is filed with someone named as Personal Representative (assuming the designation of either as valid is not contested, and it can be if someone wants to), or Probate is open "intestate" (with no Will) the fees start.  Filing and publication fees are typically in the many hundred dollar range right up front.  Unless that person both lives locally and can and will keep their act together sufficiently to deal with the court on a routine basis then there will also be legal fees involved.  Most people will either want or need at least legal consultation in doing this job; if you have a law office do it "end to end" for you (which is also an option) the cost is going to double or more.  The cost of this process in dollar terms is almost-always well north of a thousand dollars simply in court fees alone by the time it's all said and done; with lawyers involved it only takes one that's a bit of a snake to run the bill through the roof since all time is billed hourly.  Choose wisely and ask lots of questions!

Further, and much worse in many cases than the money hit is the fact that once Probate is opened there are statutory time windows that amount to a virtual standstill in terms of anything being paid out or distributed and similar.  The reason for this is that all states have a "Bar Date" for claims; 3 or 4 months is common and the clock does not start running until Probate is filed and published.  A company or person with a financial claim on the estate has that long to file their claim; if the Personal Representative pays out anything beyond funeral and ordinary maintenance costs (e.g. utility bills on a house, etc) and there are insufficient funds to cover claims he or she can be held personally responsible for those debts!  Therefore the usual (and good) advice is distribute nothing until the bar date passes so you know exactly how much is left.  If the Personal Representative is comfortable enough with the decedent's debt profile (usually only true if you were running that person's money for a couple of years prior to their death) then some distribution can be made sooner, especially of things that have little financial but lots of sentimental value (various bits and pieces of personal property, etc.)  One thing to be very conscious of is anything on a lease; this most-often comes up with cars but it can be anything (e.g. an apartment!)  Death does not void a lease in nearly all cases and the firm or person the decedent took it from can and usually will try to collect the entire remaining balance of payments.  That can be a literal crap-ton of money and is quite capable of turning a modest estate into a smoking hole with negative value.

Next up is that most states assess an inventory fee on estates -- which amounts to a tax.  That's usually assessed on the net value of assets on the day of death. Some assess straight-up taxes as well.  There is also a potential federal estate tax issue but that doesn't hit most people as the limit is quite high ($11.4 million at present); if you're in that bracket then you're a 5-alarm idiot if you don't already have professional legal advice to deal with it in advance with some sort of bypass trust.  There are ways to defray that tax and in some cases completely avoid it but that has to be done well in advance, so if you're that wealthy head thee to a good estate planning attorney pronto.

Note that if you do not file probate on an estate then there is still a statute of limitations on debts -- typically two years, but in some states it can be materially longer.  In other words if there are debts then it's to advantage to bar any who don't pay attention by filing Probate -- but only if there are assets to pay the debts with and, when that's done, something will be left!  Otherwise the correct action is to walk away and let the creditors pound sand; that you're named in a Will does not mean you're obligated until and unless you accept the appointment.  Figure out if it's worth it (there will be something left, in your best estimation, and whatever you'll receive is enough to be worth your trouble) before you file!

IMHO, assuming no minor children, your goal while alive should be to make it not worth it to Probate the Estate even if there are assets and by doing so deny both the lawyers and the courts their fees.

Many times this can be done.

First, financial accounts of various sorts can for zero cost have what is known as "POD" put on them.  That's payable on death and it's exactly what the name implies.  You designate who gets what percentage and it's a simple form you fill out at the bank or brokerage.  If you die your heirs need only present a death certificate, which they can usually obtain within a week or your passing, and the money is theirs -- period.  A cashier's check is cut and that's the end of it.  Likewise life insurance policies should always name specific beneficiaries and not your Estate.  If you have modest debts -- such as a credit card for ordinary monthly expenses -- and someone you trust to pay it when you die then POD them an account specifically for that purpose with just enough in it for that to happen.  They pay the debts after you pass with that money and that's the end of it.

Second, if you have Real Estate and it's owned and has a positive equity then the superior means of dealing with it is usually a Revocable Living Trust.  It costs money to set one up if you use a lawyer (typically a couple of thousand) and it's state specific as is a Will but only at initiation.  Once established it remains valid even if you move to a new state.  The only thing to be careful of is the potential for state tax considerations in states that have a death or income tax.  If you live in such a state and intend to move to a state where such is not the case move first, then set it up in the new state.  If you already have a trust in a hostile tax environment state then revoke it, transfer the assets out once you move and set up a new trust in the "friendly" state, transferring them into the new one.  A trust, once set up, must be funded by having the assets transferred into it.  In other words for a house you re-title the house into the Trust.  There are people who claim that a trust "hides" ownership -- this is not really true unless you name someone else as Trustee to manage it, which is very dangerous and for most people should be done, because title has to vest in a person; thus it's something like "Karl Denninger as Trustee for blah-blah Trust of date-set-up."  But, since the Trust document itself is private who's named as a beneficiary is not disclosed and the Trust is not filed with a court after you die.  In the trust documents you name a successor trustee who is the person (or chain of persons) who obtains control of the trust after you die.  You can designate pretty much anything that's legal which you want done in a Trust.  Revocable living trusts can be modified at-will including assets being moved into and out of them during your life, you can change beneficiaries, etc.  Note that a revocable living trust does not provide any sort of tax protection since you maintain control over the assets until your death, at which point it becomes irrevocable and cannot be changed.

Trusts can also have financial accounts re-titled into them and that's frequently done if, for example, you have minor children and a fair bit of money -- or adult children you don't want to have get all the cash at once.  Thus the term "Trust Fund Babies"; if there's plenty of money you may be perfectly ok with having a law firm named as the successor trustee to carry it out when you get hit by a bus since you don't care about the fees and costs.  For most people designating the chain of heirs is sufficient, but once you get into high net worth situations you may make a different choice.

Note that in most cases you do not want to title vehicles into a trust; the reason is that in many states it is difficult to obtain insurance on them.  They're one of the few things you should basically never put in a revocable trust, unless it's something like a classic car collection.

Along with the Trust you usually want what is called a "pour over" Will, which simply states that anything not in the trust and otherwise undisposed goes into the Trust on your death.  Note that the Will still has to be probated; if it's a "small estate" this is cheap and fast but the entire point of using the Trust and POD in the first place is to avoid the cost and hassle of formal probate -- if you don't re-title things properly you spent the time and trouble (never mind money if a lawyer was involved) to set the trust up fro nothing since the pour-over Will still have to be probated!

The key difference with a Trust is that just like a POD on a financial account it doesn't go through probate; the court never gets their hands on it and thus there are no delays or fees assessed by same.  This means the heirs get possession and control literally as soon as you die, which makes things a lot simpler.  In addition nobody has access to your list of who gets what other than the trustee; unlike a Will which is filed with the court and becomes public a Trust does not.

Consider that if you have all your assets covered by a Will -- a house, a bank account, maybe a brokerage account -- and you die, until someone files that Will and is named Personal Representative how does the power bill get paid at the house?  Your bank account is locked on the day of your death and a power of attorney to access that account becomes worthless.  Someone is going to have to fork up their money to take care of that until the Will can be put into probate and Estate accounts set up and financial accounts transferred or liquidated, all of which costs time and money.  In addition there's a very clean argument that nobody has the right of possession (e.g. to live there!) in said house at the moment of your death until Probate is established and on the day the Probate Court appoints the Personal Representative that person immediately has a fiduciary duty to preserve the value of same for the benefit of all the heirs.  This can easily conflict with reality; let's say you have someone living in the house who is a partial heir but is a drug user and might trash the place or interfere with the sale required since no heir has the means or desire to buy out the others; the PR can, if the house isn't to pass solely to said person, have a legal duty to forcibly evict them no matter who it is and no matter what else is in the Will as their duty is to protect the Estate assets for the benefit of all the heirs (not just the person living there) and that duty is not to the dead person it's to the court!

If the bank account is POD'd to your heirs in some percentage distribution and the house is in a Trust that specifies that "X" has a right of possession then you immediately (within a couple of days) have the funds to pay the power bill and whoever is so-designated has the rights set forth in the Trust document no matter whether it's to the benefit of the asset -- or the rest of the estate -- or not.  In other words your desires before your death are continued exactly after your death and as long as whatever you put in that document is legal it's enforceable.  Even better is that whatever people have the right to possession of the property need do nothing to enjoy it, and the title remains undisturbed since the Trust still owns it.

Now the successor trustee, once you die in the case of a Revocable Living Trust, still has to dispose of the property as the Trust directs.  But re-titling the house out of the Trust into someone's hands (if it's a 100% gift) or selling it and splitting the proceeds is no different than any other Real Estate transaction, as opposed to filing a Will, having the PR appointed, getting letters of authority and similar, along with all the delays and costs involved.

Finally none of this changes tax and debt obligations; you cannot evade either.  If you try creditors (or the IRS) can (and if its worth it for them will) sue to claw back whatever you try to distribute outside of the process.  If you have $10 large in a bank account and owe $25 large on a credit card, thinking you can POD the bank account to your daughter as a way to screw the credit card company out of the $25,000 that's likely to fail and get her sued a few months after you pass, quite possibly after she's already spent the money!  Don't do that.

Finally there are "small estate" rules for people who die with little in the way of assets but the limits vary from state to state and in some states are laughably low, to the point that someone with nothing more than a modest car exceeds them.

As you can see this can be a lot more complex than it first appears, even if you aren't particularly wealthy.  The only place it doesn't matter at all is if you either are or intend to die broke (or even better, deeply in the hole) -- in that case then **** 'em and do nothing with regard to finances (e.g. POD, will or trust), on purpose, but make damn sure nobody else has joint responsibility for anything so the people who you owe can't come after someone else when you die.

In short get competent advice -- there are plenty of people out there who are outright snakes and whoever is managing things for you when you pass is going to get to meet a bunch of them.

I just recently wound up my later mother's estate; I'm not a lawyer nor did I set up her affairs originally, but I did hold powers of attorney for both financial matters and health care and was her Personal Representative, and have seen the flat-out ugly bullcrap that everyone in the world tries to pull.  I got dozens of spammy and in some cases scammy letters from various entities and people, along with more than a few phone calls.  It's a five alarm pain in the ass and a good thing that I'm pretty-much a pissed-off alligator when someone steps on my tail and am more than willing to chase-and-bite -- hard.  Most people would have been butt****ed by some of the crap that was pulled -- as it stands everyone who was legitimately owed money (not many) got paid and there was something left, with none of the schemers and scammers getting anything.  That's the way it should be but it was overly complex -- when my time comes it won't be.

Oh do **** off you old coot.

At the wreckage near Bishoftu in a small pastoral farm field and in the Java Sea off Indonesia lie the remains of the early victims of arrogant, algorithm-driven corner cutting, by reckless corporate executives and their captive government regulators.

You know, that something is 50+ years old in basic design doesn't make it bad, especially when it hasn't failed a bunch of times in those 50 years that could be pinned on some inherent vice.

To the contrary.

Nader had a use at one time.  Then again my family owned a Corvair in my youth and we didn't die.  In fact it was my mother's daily driver, so you can bet I rode in it as a kid more times than I could count, more than a few of them without any seat belt on too.  And she wasn't all that good of a driver either -- certainly not up to racing standards.  Can I tell you about the time she hit a bridge?  No, really, she did.....

Don't get me wrong -- as my other articles point out there's plenty of finger-pointing to do with the 737MAX, with most of it aimed at the MCAS system and its poorly documented characteristics.

I'll even go so far (and have) as to call five-alarm bullcrap on allowing a 0.6 degree control authority to turn into a 2.5 degree one without the entire fault and risk analysis being re-run up and down the line, including the impact on CG and cargo carrying capacity.  After all it's not the authority the pilot may require at cruise altitude and speed (he probably has enough to rip the tail off the plane if he could use the whole thing rapidly there) -- it's down low and slow when that's going to matter.

I can also raise a big stink about the fact I'm quite sure (although I don't have a flight or system manual for the plane) that there are multiple other sources of imputed attitude (angle-of-attack) data available, and as a result it shouldn't be all that hard for the flight management system to know that a sensor is full of crap in short order -- including on the ground at power-up when the angle of attack is (obviously) not some wildly-divergent figure.  Not doing that right up front -- and charging extra to compare data in the air is IMHO flat-out culpably wrong.  Digging back into why the system didn't cross-check as a matter of routine (that is, why someone or a bunch of someones thought it was not necessary or didn't consider it, and whether that was a pure revenue play with excuses paving the road) is something we deserve answers to, because it's something I would have thought of -- and I don't do flight control computers.

And I can make a stink about the fact the the previous generation 737 aircraft (from what I've been told by a couple of people who drive 'em) apparently disconnected auto-trim on a converse manual control input and this one does not (which makes sense; if you go the opposite way the computer has clearly gotten it wrong) so if the pilots (and carriers) were told this plane flies exactly like the old one and relied on that, well, no it doesn't.

I can take an even bigger beef with statistical models used to "predict" failure rates.  I love those lines of BS that are commonly run in the computer world; 1x10^-14 or -15 bit-error rates, for example, or "2 million hours MTBF" that sound like "oh you mean that never happens" -- and since you believe that you never need to make known-good backups too.  Let me know who you are if you buy that bullcrap so I can prepare to bill you at $1,000+/hour to try recover your general ledger and all the data that went into it (never mind the rest of your business data) when you lose it, because you eventually will.  Oh, and may I remind you up front my odds of complete success in that circumstance -- that is, you lose little or nothing and at the end you're mostly ok business-wise -- are about one in five?

Or the reality of computers generally, which is that they run on electrons being stored, moved around and compared, and guess what -- there are these things called cosmic rays that can flip bits without warning in same.  Happen often?  No.  Does it happen?  Uh, yeah, it does.  Can this be guarded against?  In some cases (e.g. ECC memory) but not all (e.g. same hit on a logic gate in a peripheral, etc.)  Do aircraft systems shield against this?  I'm sure they do; military systems do, but is that shielding perfect and are defenses like ECC perfect?  I hope nobody's counting on that to keep them from making smoking holes in the ground.....

None of this, however, changes that a human pilot had quite some time to figure out what was going on or simply decide all the computers are full of crap, I'm turning them off and flying the plane.  At what point was that the right call?  Obviously before the ground was hit, but also obviously neither crew did it.  Is this human-factors engineering, people too damned reliant on technology, ****ty training or.... something else?  Hellifiknow but don't you think we better figure it out before we make more smoking holes?  For all we know the second auger job might have ended the same way but not started the same way and there's some evidence of that (e.g. reports of an abnormally high take-off speed; unsubstantiated at this point since the data is not yet available from the FDR.)

And then there's what drove this entire thing, which was carriers demanding "same type" so they didn't have to spend much if any money on retraining and such -- and not just for pilots either, but also for ground crews and related things.  There's a hell of a lot more than just a plane involved in flying a plane, in short, as anyone who has ever been to an airport knows.

Finally whatever you think of the professionalism of the crews involved (that is, are the carriers outside the US hiring competent people, in the main) there's one glaring fact -- Lion Air, the first 737MAX to go down, had a similar fault to what appears to have crashed it the day prior and for inexplicable reasons the aircraft was not immediately put on the ground, the problem reported, including up the line to Boeing and the aircraft tagged out (grounded) until the cause was found.

Might that have led to a resolution path before anyone got killed?

Maybe, maybe not.

But it didn't happen, and that one's not on Boeing since that flight did land safely.

Or is it on Boeing?

This much we do know -- modern aircraft engines, at least, send a lot of data in real time to manufacturers and so do modern aircraft avionics and flight management systems.  Malaysia's lost hull in which we have had reported said system was intentionally disabled, anyone?  So..... was the data sent, to whom was it sent, who if anyone got it on the previous day's flight with Lion Air when they had the computer go crazy but they lived and if someone did get it why didn't they instantly go ape**** when they got it and ground the damned aircraft?

I want an answer to that question too because again -- but for that, if the data was sent and someone got it 300 people would be alive.

Finally don't be so sure US crews are that "vastly" superior.  We now know that a United Express plane missed the runway entirely in Maine.  The original report was that it "slid off" the runway in icy conditions; that turns out to have been wrong.  On the first attempt they went around on a missed approach but on the second they landed between the runway and taxiway on what was probably (if there hadn't been snow!) grass, ripping the gear off the aircraft.  Oops.

So let's do get to the bottom of this and let's not just change the software and call it a day.  Specifically, let's make damn sure that if the MCAS system retains it's 2.5 degree trim change authority that all of the calculations and fault analysis related to that are run with that figure and the 0.6 degree figures are voided, meaning that until that's complete the plane doesn't fly again.

What falls out of that does; it might be nothing, it might be something.  It might even be a bad something, force MCAS to basically go away and with that all the retraining and certification issues come back with the cert as an entirely different type.  Or maybe something less is required -- but let's have the formal verification re-run and know its right.

What I've said before and will say again is that the sort of rot that leads to these incidents doesn't happen in a day or a week.  It takes years, even decades.  Likewise it can't be fixed in a day or a week either.

Thiokol, if you remember, ignored multiple engineers who had told them that the seals on the shuttle booster rocket were unsafe at low temperatures.  But their warnings were ignored, and despite a director for Thiokol refusing to sign the launch recommendation -- he believed the concerns were valid -- NASA launched anyway.  Challenger was destroyed along with everyone aboard.

I suspect there's a decent pile of crap sandwiches to be served here, as I've said before, and I can't come up with any good reason for that control authority deviation to not be run back through the full set of analysis.  That not being done, along with the reset behavior not being part of the analysis, and it appears it wasn't, is inexcusable.

But then again so is not grounding a plane when everyone on board damn near dies and only because there was a competent pilot in the jump seat did they figure it out and successfully complete the flight -- then the same apparent fault kills everyone on board the next day.

Figure it out and nail the responsible parties to the cross -- Nader-style scaremongering garbage serves nobody.

Every one of the officers and directors.

Or just destroy the company.  I don't much care which.

I'm talking about Boeing here.

Christchurch saw 50 people killed by a maniac.  The 737MAX has killed six times as many people and destroyed two hulls.

STFU about terrorism and how horrible it is until there are 300+ criminal charges of manslaughter laid for the souls aboard those two aircraft unless this entire article is crap, which it probably isn't.

Specifically, the article states:

• The failure analysis, including the "what bad thing(s) happen if this goes wrong" were predicated on a design that had the authority to move the trim by 0.6 degrees.  By that maximum movement the system could not crash the plane or kill anyone on board (it might produce minor injuries or discomfort to passengers however.)
  
  
• The limits were later updated to 2.5 degrees but the documents were not updated and thus the analysis was not re-run. That's four times the original limit, and would have prompted a much more serious rating in the event of a malfunction.
  
  
• Worse, it was not documented that the system would reset whenever the pilot entered a trim command, and thus there was no effective limit at all on the amount of trim change the system could input.  That would have likely led to a "will lose the aircraft" (e.g. "CATASTROPHIC", or "must be prevented") rating for a failure.

To have a system that winds up during testing requiring four times the designed and expected range of authority is outrageous on its face.  To be off by 5%, 10% -- that's pretty normal.  You can only model so much, and models are never exact.

But when you're off by four hundred percent your original design was crap.

Further, to have the system reset whenever the pilot gave a contrary command meant that it had unlimited authority.  The total range from neutral to the limit is 5 degrees, so 2.5 degrees is half the total design range from neutral with one action.  That's not a "minor" adjustment!

As I said in my previous article prior to reading this I had serious questions about whether Boeing pushed the envelope too far with this design in the first place, shaving margins.

Now, if this article is correct it's clear that Boeing knew during flight testing that the expected behavior of the aircraft with the new engines did not match the actual, in-flight performance; what they actually got in terms of aerodynamic stability under certain conditions was much worse than they expected.

But rather than change the documents to reflect the true amount of correction required and document that the actual authority of the system was unlimited due to reset behavior or put hard limit switches on the system to prevent that and then re-run the analysis, which might have resulted in at minimum a different type certificate (read: more cost for customers as pilots must be re-trained) or worse, a denied certification (potentially catastrophic costs requiring re-engineering the engine mounts and aerodynamic effects of same, redesign and re-fabrication of the wings and control surfaces, or even determination that the problems were not able to be feasibly corrected!) Boeing didn't update the documents and thus the re-analysis was not done.

The Seattle Times calls this flawed analysis.  That, of course, assumes Boeing did not know that the authority of the system was changed to have four times that originally specified and did not know that if the pilot commanded opposite trim the system treated that as a reset and restarted, giving it the set authority anew, effectively meaning it had authority only limited by the physical limits of the mechanism.

That is an unreasonable assumption since someone changed the limits of authority between the time the system was designed and when testing was completed.  That someone most-certainly did know; the change did not happen on its own.

In addition Boeing knew that pilot commands in the opposite direction reset the system because Boeing engineers coded it that way.  Someone wrote that spec and someone else signed off on it when the programming was complete; in addition during testing it was tested against that spec.

But the FAA wasn't notified of any of this, the documents were, if the article is correct, not updated and the failure analysis was not re-examined in light of these facts.

Look folks I've written code like this.  Yeah, it was a long time ago but so what?  It wasn't for a plane but it was operating heavy machinery where excursions beyond authorized and reasonable limits either had the potential to do severe property damage and in some cases could kill someone -- or a lot of someone's.

You don't change limits from the original design without going back through the failure analysis.

You don't put a system together like this without defining what the maximum limits of its authority are, and what happens if they are entirely consumed -- along with what can happen if they're exceeded.

If the "what can happen if they're exceeded" is very bad (people get badly hurt, die, or serious property damage happens) then you put physical, hard backup on said system that independently prevents that and which is not able to be overridden by the software in question, whether it's a limit switch that cuts the power to the contactor's coil or something similar, and also considers any time that limit switch triggers an alarm event which indicates a critical malfunction took place that must be corrected before the thing in question is returned to service, since that "last ditch" safety device is there for the specific purpose of preventing a disaster and it just triggered. You cannot run that last-ditch safety through the original control system in any way because if it goes off you know, with certainty, the original system is defective -- it has either gone insane according to its operating rules or is broken.

Further, and perhaps most-critically, to not look VERY closely at ALL of the original design assumptions and their safety margins when you design for an 0.6 degree maximum automated trim correction, which is about 12% of the range from neutral and during testing you're forced to allow a 50% range from neutral to meet requirements, four times the designed and expected limit, you ****ed up when you designed that thing in a way that might not be able to be safely operated no matter what you do in the present "as-built" configuration.

You have no damned business letting that thing, whatever it is, anywhere near people it can maim or kill until and unless you can prove that being off by 400% on a critical safety item's range of authority does not reduce the margin of safety for the entire thing below reasonable limits.  In addition if you're off by that much then everything in said device needs to be re-examined down to the last piece of wire, rivet, bolt and torque spec; if you screwed the pooch that badly in one place why would I believe that's the only place your rocket scientists blew it?

To not do all of that is outrageous.

I'm not an aeronautical engineer but I understand process control, computers and shaving margins to meet "corporate needs", whether those needs be time or money.  If what The Seattle Times is reporting is accurate not only did that happen the FAA, the agency that's supposed to stop that crap from happening and spank people if they try it instead stuck its head up Boeing's ass and issued a type certificate, all in the name of "promoting" American aviation.

Don't talk to me about terrorists and shootings when there are two planes full of people who are dead as a consequence of this bull****.