Boeing 737 Max 8 Design Issues

The Air Current:

Every airplane development is a series of compromises, but to deliver the 737 Max with its promised fuel efficiency, Boeing had to fit 12 gallons into a 10 gallon jug. Its bigger engines made for creative solutions as it found a way to mount the larger CFM International turbines under the notoriously low-slung jetliner. It lengthened the nose landing gear by eight inches, cleaned up the aerodynamics of the tail cone, added new winglets, fly-by-wire spoilers and big displays for the next generation of pilots.

It pushed technology, as it had done time and time again with ever-increasing costs, to deliver a product that made its jets more-efficient and less-costly to fly.

In the case of the 737 Max, with its nose pointed high in the air, the larger engines – generating their own lift – nudged it even higher. The risk Boeing found through analysis and later flight testing was that under certain high-speed conditions both in wind-up turns and wings-level flight, that upward nudge created a greater risk of stalling. Its solution was MCAS, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System control law that would allow for both generations of 737 to behave the same way.

MCAS would automatically trim the horizontal stabilizer to bring the nose down, activated with Angle of Attack data. It’s now at the center of the Lion Air investigation and stalking the periphery of the Ethiopian crash.

How to Disable Android Back Button in Ionic 1 / Angular

To disable back button in Android put one of the codes below in your app.js in the .run function.

// app.js

// Disable Back in Entire App
$ionicPlatform.registerBackButtonAction(function(){
  event.preventDefault();
}, 100);

Or Conditionally Disable Back:

// app.js

$ionicPlatform.registerBackButtonAction(function(){
  if($ionicHistory.currentStateName === 'someStateName'){
    event.preventDefault();
  }else{
    $ionicHistory.goBack();
  }
}, 100);

Facebook Service are Down For a Lot of Users

The Verge:

Facebook and Instagram appear to be partially down for some users around the world today. While you can open both platforms and some services appear to have been restored, users are reporting issues with sending messages on Messenger, posting to the feed on all Facebook products, and accessing other features on Facebook.com, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Even Facebook-owned Oculus VR is experiencing issues related to the outage.

Earlier in the day, WhatsApp appeared to be fine for many people, but users in Paraguay, India, Bangladesh, Argentina, and more note that they begun experiencing issues with sending messages as the afternoon went on. DownDetector indicates that those in Brazil were experiencing the most severe outages.

Facebook is using Twitter to explain its outage.

Spotify, Apple Battle Songwriter Royalties

Pitchfork:

The drama heated up in January 2018, when the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board decided to boost the royalty rate that Spotify, Apple Music, and similar streamers must pay songwriters and publishers. Flash forward to last week, when Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon revealed they were each planning to appeal that ruling. The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) blasted the move, claiming that Spotify and Amazon had chosen to “sue songwriters.”

Perhaps fueled by this incendiary wording—which a NMPA spokesperson tells Pitchfork is “shorthand for the technical legal process of them appealing”—backlash against the streaming services quickly spread among songwriters and industry figures. This week, Spotify responded to the criticism with a blog post noting the complexity of the situation.

Apple is not taking part in the appeals. As such, the NMPA and other industry figures were quick to praise Apple as pro-artist. That said, if the appeals succeed, Apple could conceivably have its cake and eat it too, enjoying the benefit of lower rates without the ire of coming out in favor of them. Apple’s vast phone business and huge cash reserves also mean it’s more insulated from higher costs of doing business than Spotify would be.

It’s a mess.

Did IBM Violate Flickr Users’ Privacy?

The Verge reporting:

IBM took nearly a million photos from Flickr, used them to figure out how to train facial recognition training programs, and shared them with outside researchers. But as NBC points out, the people photographed on Flickr didn’t consent to having their photos used to develop facial recognition systems — and might easily not have, considering those systems could eventually be used to surveil and recognize them.

While the photographers may have gotten permission to take pictures of these people, some told NBC that the people who were photographed didn’t know their images had been annotated with facial recognition notes and could be used to train algorithms.

“None of the people I photographed had any idea their images were being used in this way,” one photographer told NBC.

Not cool.

Man Arrested For Showing Up at YouTube HQ

The Verge:

A man was arrested this past Sunday after showing up to Google’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters and threatening violence over his belief that YouTube had deleted his account and the single video he had posted to it, BuzzFeed News reported today.

Unfortunately for the man, 33-year-old Kyle Long, it was actually his wife who deleted the account. She then told him it was likely Google’s doing because she feared how he might react. Not only that, but Long had driven all the way from Maine, more than 3,300 miles, on his mission.

Wow.

How To Enable Google Chrome Dark Mode

The Verge:

Chrome 73 has officially rolled out to all users today, bringing with it several new improvements, including the long-awaited dark mode for macOS. (“Windows support is on the way,” the release notes read.)

Dark mode was first announced for Chrome last month, but today’s release has made it official. It works pretty much as you’d expect: if dark mode is enabled on your computer, Chrome will automatically theme itself appropriately to match, in what essentially looks like the browser’s regular darker Incognito Mode menu bars. (Incognito Mode while using dark mode on Chrome looks virtually identical, save for a new icon in the menu bar.)

It’s technically not the first time Chrome has offered dark or themed options — Google has offered themes for Chrome (including dark mode-esque styles) in the Chrome Web Store for a while, but today’s update makes it more official on a system level. So, instead of having to switch back and forth manually, Chrome will simply just respect whatever your native settings are.

You can install Dark Mode by going to the Google Chrome Theme.

Netflix Going Down The Wrong Path

Tech Crunch:

On the heels of its groundbreaking foray into interactive storytelling with the choose-your-own-adventure style “Black Mirror” episode, Bandersnatch, Netflix will look to produce much more interactive entertainment, according to vice president of content, Todd Yellin.

Speaking at the FICCI-Frames conference for Indian media and entertainment in Mumbai, Yellin said in a keynote that audiences could expect many more interactive stories to come from the streaming media service, according to a report in Variety.

“We realized, wow, interactive storytelling is something we want to bet more on,” Yellin reportedly said. “We’re doubling down on that. So expect over the next year or two to see more interactive storytelling.”

This is a terrible idea. I hated that Black Mirror episode, and I don’t think films and TV are better with interaction. They are worse.

Adventure Game Trüberbrook Review

Charlie Hall writing for Polygon:

Even more disorienting is the storyline itself. Without spoiling too much, Trüberbrook feels like a bad episode of Doctor Who. Long sections of exposition, delivered by static characters who often can’t even be bothered to look toward the camera, do very little to make anything clear. Rather than lingering in certain interactions, I found myself clicking rapidly through the same dialogue options over and over again, searching for the right sequence to move the action along.

Most disappointing of all is that the gameplay itself is merely perfunctory. In motion, Trüberbrook is achingly linear, and relies on a series of barely connected tasks. Almost nothing in the game can be described as a puzzle. It’s more of a pixel hunt, with a contextual interface that does all of the work for you. The end result is a world that’s beautiful to look at, but a game that fails to entertain in any meaningful way.

Trüberbrook is available starting today on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One are scheduled to launch on April 17.

This is a real bummer if true. I will be playing regardless.

Get it on Steam.

Ionic Slider Input Doesn’t Work in Popups on iOS

The issue seems to be in the modal.js file of the ionic library

https://github.com/driftyco/ionic/blob/1.x/js/angular/service/modal.js#L194

The temporary fix:

var isInScroll = ionic.DomUtil.getParentOrSelfWithClass(e.target, 'scroll');
if (isInScroll !== null && !isInScroll) {
    e.preventDefault();
}

Another possible solution is to add the class=”scroll” to your input element that is of type range.

Link to the github issue.

Pilots Complained About Boeing 737 Max 8 Before Accidents

Dallas News reporting:

Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient” several months before Sunday’s Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people, an investigation by The Dallas Morning News found.

The News found at least five complaints about the Boeing model in a federal database where pilots can voluntarily report about aviation incidents without fear of repercussions.

The disclosures found by The News reference problems during Boeing 737 Max 8 flights with an autopilot system, and they all occurred while trying to gain altitude during takeoff — many mentioned the plane turning nose down suddenly. While records show these flights occurred during October and November, the information about which airlines the pilots were flying for is redacted from the database.

Records show a captain who flies the Max 8 complained in November that it was “unconscionable” that the company and federal authorities allowed pilots to fly the planes without adequate training or fully disclosing information about how its systems were different from other planes.

Which Airlines Have Boeing 737 Max 8

New York Times:

Which Airlines Have Boeing 737 Max 8? At least 20 airlines around the world have grounded their 737 Max 8 planes.

Source.

For an up to date list visit the official airline webpages.

Fox News:

Two top Democratic U.S. senators called on Boeing to ground all 737 Max 8 planes operating in the United States while the deadly weekend crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet is investigated, while the head of the House Transportation Committee said Monday that he would “think twice” about boarding the aircraft in the future.

Facebook Deletes Ads about Breaking up Facebook

The Verge:

The ads that were briefly taken down were replaced with text that read, “This ad was taken down because it goes against Facebook’s advertising policies.” The company has policies around using Facebook’s logo and name in advertisements, and a Facebook spokesperson told Politico these rules were why the ads were originally removed.

In a tweet, Warren responded to Facebook saying, “Curious why I think FB has too much power? Let’s start with their ability to shut down debate over whether FB has too much power. Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor.”

Right, because of the logo.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Face Unlock is Not Reliable

Ars Technica reporting:

There are a number of reports that say—surprise!—a 2D image sensor can be fooled by a 2D image. The Verge was able to unlock the device with a video, and YouTube channel Unbox Therapy was able to unlock the S10 just by playing one of its public channel videos in view of the camera. The worst example is probably from AndroidWorld.it, which was able to unlock the Galaxy S10 by waving a still photo around in front of the device.

The Galaxy S10 can also reportedly have trouble telling different people apart. Security Researcher Jane Wong was able to unlock her brother’s phone with her face.

Not surprised.