How to crash an airplane – Nickolas Means | The Lead Developer UK 2016

LeadDev4 HN recommenders · 2019–2024
1.5M views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-04-26

Nickolas Means tells the story of United Airlines Flight 232, which lost all flight control yet saved more than half its passengers. He draws lessons on teamwork, crew resource management and leadership for software teams.

Strongly recommended as a gripping case study whose lessons carry over to engineering management and safety.

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6 comments from Hacker News

@nrb2019 · in “In a Life-or-Death Crisis, Humility Is Everything”

The article does a poor job of explaining how truly incredibly the flight crew of United Airlines Flight 232 performed under crisis; I watched a talk[1] by Nickolas Means recently that goes deeper into the events of that day and the lessons learned. Wikipedia also has a good summary of the NTSB accident report[3]. 1: [VIDEO] 2: [LINK] 3: [LINK]

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@hnarn2020 · in “FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics”

That depends on your definition of "tricky". If you mean something that requires human intelligence, I would say it's the complete opposite. More or less the first thing pilots start doing during an emergency is to follow lists, it's all very procedural and most failures have been predicted in advance, as well as what would need to be done to resolve them, or at least eliminate the immediate threat -- and if these procedures do not help, you are in a very bad place anyway. There are exceptions, of course.[1] I would say that the "tricky parts", as always, are very generally the situations that we did not predict and did not program for. [1]: [VIDEO]

@wp3816402020 · in “List of YouTube channels for improving web development and programming skills”

This list with no context is bordering on useless. Here are some channels i've watched and enjoyed: 1. interviewing.io - they do tech interviews with big5/6 tech co candidates and step through them: [LINK] 2. CS Dojo - ex-googler who steps through CS topics (data structures, algorithms) at the intermediate level and applications in python + javascript: [LINK] 3. Academind - Heard of tech x and have no idea what it is? Chances are there is a 20-30 min video on this channel explaining it clearly. He also does longer form "build x app" videos: [LINK] 4. comma.ai / George Hotz - ML + AI livestreams from geohot: [LINK] 5. Lex Fridman - ML, AI, python and tons of awesome interviews with luminaries: [LINK] 6. Joma Tech - data science, big companies / startups as a dev and some funny vids: [LINK] 7. Wes Bos - decent css explainer vids for whenever you're _how do i align the fucking boxes_ + react / js [LINK] 8. Rect conf - Sophie and Dan's presentations are great: [LINK] 9. Nickolas Means - not a channel but two presentations that are good: 9.1 How to crash a plane : [VIDEO] 9.2 The original skunk works: [LINK] There are tons of shitty tutorial videos and channels to avoid if you just rely on search (the comments are full of what appear to be dev contractors out of their depth begging for solutions)

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@lmilcin2021 · in “How to Land a ‘Completely Uncontrollable’ Passenger Jet (2018)”

If you are into that sort of thing here is United Airlines Flight 232 where they lost all control except for being able to throttle one remaining egine (and consequently steer but only to the right) [VIDEO]

@latchkey2022 · in “Waymo's collision avoidance testing”

I watched this video yesterday which seems really applicable... How to crash an airplane – Nickolas Means [VIDEO] Reflecting on the video, they don't need to save everyone, but it certainly should be the first time when not everyone dies.

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@bertil2024 · in “Why you've never been in a plane crash”

When the conference LeadDev happens in London, they often have Nickolas Means give a talk about an aeronautic topic. It’s usually 45 minutes of nail-biting in-depth analysis of a very complicated problem, and ends with a 5 minute rotation to how the lessons from that incident apply to engineering management in general. (You also feel like you could engineer an airplane, but no you can’t: that’s just Nickolas’ talent for explanation that is fooling you. Airplanes are very hard to make.) This is all done in such a smart, seamless, obvious way to deliver a lesson that would make the Brothers Grimm feel cheated. Strongly recommend. [LINK] [VIDEO] [LINK]

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