Software engineers - Cheap is unlikely to be good

Software used in 737 Max crashes linked to Indian software company

Through an investigative journalism work, Bloomberg published an article today (‘Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers‘, 29 Jun) establishing that the Boeing’s 737 Max software had been outsourced to Indian software engineers working for only US$9 an hour in India, compared with US$35 to $40 for those in the U.S. on H1B visa or more for a full-time US software engineer.

Bloomberg also found that Boeing’s subcontractors and suppliers were also outsourcing software work to India, in order to keep the cost down and to maximize profits.

Longtime Boeing engineers whom Bloomberg spoke to, revealed that the problematic Max software which was plagued by issues, was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs. Hence, there was a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors. This led to the reliance on temporary workers making as little as US$9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace – notably India.

Two Indian software companies were found by Bloomberg to be linked to the Max software development – HCL and Cyient (formerly known as Infotech)....

Above is posted in TOC.

Two points to make, if you want something to be cheap, don't expect quality or the quality of more expensive stuff. This does not mean that pay more gets more. We have seen and experienced in many areas when you pay more but get less or get shit.

Second point, maybe the Americans are trying to pass the buck to the Indians. So easy to put the blame on other people. Is this the case, are the Americans justified to blame the Indians?  They believe the Indians are very good in software, that is why they employed so many of them just like in Singapore. So how can they blame them. You employed them, shit or genius, you asked for it.

My personal experience has not been pleasant, everything they touched becomes unstable and unreliable. From working to half working.

Even if the Americans could prove that it was the Indian software that caused the crash, Boeing is going to pay for the bills and claims. The Americans would not trust the Chinese software engineers that developed Alibaba's supply chain and Alipay systems nor wechat or Baidu. If the users are stupid enough to pick lemons, why blame others?

In the same vein, if Singapore persistently want to bring in trash to work in this island, be prepared to live with trash and half baked systems.

White men's mischief to invade Iran

After ratcheting up tension in an otherwise peaceful Persian Gulf when shippings flow smoothly, the Americans are accusing the Iranians of raising tension and threatening to invade Iran by their superior naval task force of two aircraft carriers and an assortment of naval and air resources deployed in the region. Anyone reading the western media would have no doubt that Iran is the trouble maker as that was what the western media been saying all the time. The truth is that the world's number one gangster has raised tension to a point of war, and now pretending to be the protector of peace and the sea lanes and twisting the arms of allies to provide military support to patrol the surrounding seas, to protect shipping when there was no need to except along the African coast against small time African pirates.

Now with all the military hardware in place for an invasion of Iran, the UN as usual is as mum as an dumbfuck, pretending not to see, not to know and not do say anything about the American aggression against Iran. The British, the other half of the world number one gangster is also moving in. And the Brits are using the same rhetoric, that Iran is raising tension and threatening British shipping, so they are sending their warships to the protect their shipping.

This is what was reported in the YahooNews.

'Britain said Friday it was sending a second warship to the Gulf and raising the alert level in the oil-rich region as tensions spike after Iranian gunboats threatened a UK supertanker.

The decision was disclosed as US President Donald Trump stepped up his war of words with the Islamic republic, which breached part of a nuclear accord already rejected by Washington.

"Iran better be careful," Trump told reporters outside the White House.

"They're treading on very dangerous territory. Iran, if you're listening, you better be careful."'

They are blaming the Iranians for confronting British ship but ignoring their own hostile act of seizing and arresting an Iranian ship near Gibraltar claiming that the tanker was delivering Iranian oil to Syria. How did an Iranian ship sailing from the Persian Gulf ended in Gibraltar on the way to Syria is as comical as you can get. It means the tanker had to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in South African, into the Atlantic Ocean and turn around through the Straits of Gibraltar to get to Syria instead of going through the Suez Canal.

The western lies are getting more desperate and ridiculous. And the rest of the world just took them without muttering a word. It is fait accompli. When the world's number one gangster said so, no one would dare to question the truth. It is best to keep quiet and turn to look the other way. Better still to join the hostile gangsters to attack Iran, provide military support in the farcical coalition force to protect shipping from being attacked by the American gangsters but blaming the Iranians for it.

What the world needs to be guarded against are the British and American pirates that went around seizing shipping in the high seas. The British seizure of the Iranian tanker is the latest incident. The Americans have been seizing ships from many countries as they want, calling themselves the international policeman but in reality international pirates, international gangsters of the high seas.

When would the UN form a coalition of forces to protect shipping from the American and British pirates?

Should the privilege of the majority be tempered with by changing the ethnic composition of our population?

Below is an extract of an article posted in YahooNews by a Laavanya Kathiravelu, likely a foreign talent recruited to replace the local talents in the academia. Dunno what is the percentage of foreigners in the academia is now foreigners, must be quite substantial. Though the article started innocently about inequality and privileges in general, the punch lines came from the below few paragraphs of the YahooNews article.

The inequality and privileges are in favour of the Chinese majority and this must change. This was historical and unnatural. The thinking in between the lines is that the racial composition should be changed to provide more equality and privileges for all, if I read it correctly, the ethnic distribution of the races should be more equal, maybe 25 per cent of each race. That would solve the problems of inequality and privileges of the Chinese majority at the expense of the minorities.

And as the writer wrote, the conversation has begun and cannot be stopped until affirmative actions are taken to dismantle the Chinese majority so that there would be less inequality and privileges favouring the majority.  The Chinese majority must go in order to create a more egalitarian society.

What do you think? Should the govt start on a policy to bring in more minorities to even the ethnic composition of our population to ensure more equality and less privileges to a majority race? If the writer is a foreigner, is this not interference in the internal affair of our country? How would the article be received by the majority Chinese and the minorities here?

Would the white majority in white migrant countries like the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada agree to sharing their privileges by changing the composition of their population?

Here is the article....

'What became quickly obvious in the impassioned responses was that the language of privilege has a galvanising and emotive appeal. While racial discrimination or racism must also be acknowledged and legislated against, privilege is more difficult to dismantle.

The idea of privilege is powerful precisely because it also speaks about the passive. It conveys how merely through inaction, we allow for inequality and unfair discrimination to perpetuate.

It is the structural basis of such privilege, whether it is lack of meritocratic education systems, or integration policies that generate unfair consequences. Individual acts must be understood as being shaped by those structures.

In Singapore, privilege at times takes on a racialised character. This adds an uncomfortable dimension to discussions of inequality, as race cannot be altered, through education, hard work or effort.

While the existence of Chinese privilege can be dismissed as simply due to the Chinese population being the overwhelming majority ethnic group, it is not a “natural” development and is held up by structures that underpin everyday social, political and economic life....

 We should draw collective energy from this political moment to keep talking. It is only in acknowledging the shared costs to our nation that we can begin to dismantle privilege and create a more egalitarian Singapore.'

Laavanya Kathiravelu is an assistant professor at the division of sociology at the Nanyang Technological University.

Boeing- Bringing down an American icon

The flutter of a butterfly in the Pacific Ocean can turn into a major storm. This is how serious a small matter that was treated lightly can turn into a major disaster. Boeing, an American icon, the biggest money earner and pride of the USA is now facing a bleak future, maybe bankruptcy. The amount of lawsuits it is facing could end up in billions of dollars of damages to be paid to victims of two major air crashes killing more than 200 passengers and air crews. There are also claims for compensation for loss of business due to grounding of Boeing 737 Max. This is not all.

There has been a series of order cancellation for Boeing aircraft going into hundreds of aircraft sales and billions of revenue going up in smokes. The reputation and reliability of Boeing aircraft would take a long time to recover when passengers just fear and avoid to fly Boeing. The biggest winners of this fiasco is Airbus and also China Aviation. Orders that were cancelled from Boeing found their way to France and China.

The future of Boeing is very bleak. Who would ever think of Boeing, the number one commercial aircraft manufacturing could hit the end of the road overnight? Boeing is like the unsinkable USA, the number one super power and richest country on earth, but going under. The sinking of Boeing could be an ominous sign that all is not well in the USA. It could a telling sign that the USA is going the same way as Boeing despite its unassailable position for so many decades as the biggest world economy.

How did Boeing meet its fate so suddenly? It is all because of a cheap software that crashed two Boeing Max 737 Max. And Boeing’s inability to undo this software fault and to change course quickly to start on a new footing resulted in the loss of confidence in all Boeing aircraft and going forward. This is another penny wise pound foolish decision taken by Boeing, to save a few dollars to hire cheap software engineers from dunno where to write cheap software for a very important flight safety function. The rest is history. Boeing will be history.

Will the USA be history soon?

And the moral of the story is…..

Lim Tean - accountability and transparency in Temasek and GIC

The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which invests the pension funds of Canadians, has published its annual report. It is a model of clarity as it fully accounts to every stakeholder who contributes to this fund on how the fund has performed over the last year.

...the CPPIB reported:
a) $239 Billion net income, after all CPPIB costs, for the last 10 years. The rate of return was 11.1% (net nominal);
b) As of March 31, 2019, the CPP Fund Value stood at $392 Billion;
c) The fund made a net income of $32 Billion, after all CPPIB costs, for fiscal 2019. The rate of return was 8.9% (net nominal)....

We cannot continue with our SWFs operating an opaque system where vital information, including the remuneration of management and our true national reserves, are kept away from the stakeholders, who are the CPF contributors and every tax payer in Singapore. Every Norwegian citizen knows at any given moment what the national reserves of Norway are. That is true transparency and accountability.

When Peoples Voice is in government, we will ensure that our SWFs operate with the transparency that is in line with 1st world standards!

The above is posted in TRE by Lim Tean. I would like to point out a few points raised by Lim Tean and why they are not relevant to compare to our CPF and the top talented fund managers in Temasek and GIC.

The lack of transparency is important in the CPF case because if they are to tell the world how much money we have in reserves, all the bankrupt companies would be queuing up to beg for money as in the case of the global financial crisis. And when the white men went down on their knees to beg for money, it is very hard to refuse and we would end up giving away our reserves to help them without knowing that white men can be con men and can cheat us and make us look so stupid.

Another good reason related to this is that our reserves could be many times more than the announced figures. And the profits could be many times more than what the Canadians are making, maybe 15%, but just being humble only. So don't think just because the announced profits are less than 5% they really mean it. The truth could be quite flattering.

As for transparency of management remuneration, they really cannot tell, if you believe what I said above. If they are transparent and tell you how many billions more they made above the Canadians, and demand to be paid proportionally, then what is being paid to them would not be enough. Singaporeans must say thank you for this.

Let's not quibble about this transparency thing if we know that our national reserves are huge, very huge and very safe. The only way to know that this is true is the amount of money the govt can spend, always in the billions on big projects, big and expensive war machine and big parties. If the govt does not have so much money in reserves, they would not dare to waste public money in unnecessary or non essential projects or events or parties.

Not to forget, they are giving away money freely to the seniors, the pioneer and merdeka generations. The money must come from somewhere, meaning our reserves are big and safe, only don't want to tell that's all.

Singaporeans must be very thankful for the non transparency in how much we have in the reserves, in how much we made every year and in not knowing how much the managers are being paid.

Accountability and transparency are unnecessary when a country is so well run by the most honest and honourable men and women money can buy.

Do I make sense?