Wait, what? The (only) two defendants both died within 48 hours of each other?

Naah, these things only happen in #current_enemy_country

It’s certainly a crazy coincidence.

Yep. I'm not into conspiracies and I think this is a massive coincidence but seeing something like this, you can understand why people would think it could be a conspiracy.

Such people would have to believe that "the enemy" have the power to control the weather. I suppose that's well within the delusions of your average conspiracy theorist, but for the rest of us it probably confines it to the realms of co-incidence.

"the enemy" have the power to control the weather

Not really... they just need enough patience to wait for bad weather before using their super-secret remote-operated boat-sinking equipment they previously planted.

NOTE: Not that I endorse any such crazy theories. After all... this was clearly the work of Cthulhu

It was the work of Hugo Chávez

;o)

I'm not a tinfoil hatter by any stretch...but there are unanswered questions...does a storm like that really come out of nowhere? Or will the Captain have had a weather report with warnings on it? Nobody else managed sink around there as far as I can tell.

Yes, rare, but yes.

The mediterranean sea is hotter this year than it has ever been and this has led to massive storms at virtually no notice all over the western and central parts.

It's difficult not to accept the death's as coincidence but, in the absence of a trail, I think it's probably best to,

Not according to the ever-diligent MP for Clacton.

The current investigation is centered around whether the storm hatches had been left open. That's a human error thing, not a random storm thing. It's within the realm of possibility that it was an inside job.

The timing between this and Stephen Chamberlain's car crash might appear coincidental, but bear in mind that while the timing of a storm probably can't be controlled, the timing of a car crash most definitely can be.

To have these two particular people dying in "freak accidents" in such close proximity to each other, after what they've just been through and the enemies they made along the way, stretches the definition of 'accident' to breaking point. And to quote Conan Doyle: "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains; however improbable; must be the truth."

Bang.

True. There was a sailor there, that took the BBC reporter out yesterday and he said it was odd. He said the only thing he can think of why it sunk was massive human error. He said he's been in water spouts in smaller boats and been fine. He said for it to take in that much water, that quickly means someone fucked up badly. He also pointed out it should of been birth in port knowing the storm was coming as there was room.

On the other hand, to quote Richard Feynman:

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”

If you want to make this a correct analogy...

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate A1. An incredible, almost unbelievably rare sighting. And what's even more amazing is, yesterday I saw the license plate A2, which is also incredibly rare!! Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see two of the absolute rarest plates possible, 2 nights in a row? Amazing!”

Chemtrails ............

Very easy to dismiss "conspiracy" theorists. I used to be exactly like you, believe whatever the gov or BBC spewed out.

A viral outbreak that was in the same place as a BL4 lab, what a coicidence.

Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby before authorities could get the truth out of him, what a coincidence.

Boeing whistleblowers die suddenly, what a coincidence.

Nordstream 2 blew up, and nobody can figure out exaclty who did it, I'm sure its just circumstantial.

I'm sure we went into Iraq to "liberate" the people, nothing to do with oil at all.

Thing is, the dark forces / perps rely on brain dead believers of anything authority figures spit out to carry on doing what they do.

This could be coincidence. Thing is, the dismiss an alternative and label anyone who questions it in the way you did says more about you chief.

No, it is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists because they are weak minded and look for (a), the easiest 'answers' to their lack of understanding of what the world can accomplish / screw up under its own accord, and (b) use the belief of their constructed conspiracies to believe that they hold a "special secret of understanding" that the rest [of the world] doesn't.

It is a 'conspiracy', in a way, because tragedies and dramatic events don't happen in a vacuum, they happen after a sequence of failures and decisions, and the circumstances that bring those failures to a exceptional point in time. So, for example, Boeing's 737 Max failures are a 'conspiracy' because prior decisions (MCAS, no training, hiding its existence from pilots and the FAA, single point of failure, etc.) because those failures were brought into tragedy because of circumstance. Twice.

Once you understand that complex things happen in complex systems, most often you don't *need* a conspiracy theory to understand what happened, and why. But you *do* need to know all the complexities to understand that - and that's where conspiracy theorists FAIL. They pick-and-choose their data and facts and don't know everything involved, yet believe they do, and their made-up story explains it all in a far more simple manner than the complex truth.

It'd have to be a hell of a conspiracy to be hit by a waterspout during a squall

The waterspout is the only part of this that wasn't (obviously) caused by humans; everything else was plannable.

- Open hatches on an otherwise unsinkable boat? Caused by humans.

- Almost unbelievable breakdown in evacuation and safety protocols by the highly trained crew of a £30m yacht? Caused by humans.

- Deadly car crash? Caused by humans.

It's not a huge leap of imagination to see how this could be "arranged".

Is it not a very strange and inexplicable coincidence that a waterspout should turn up just as there were sinister plots afoot to sink the boat ?

I'm assuming that we have incontrovertible evidence that there was a waterspout, and that beyond a little cloud seeding weather control remains firmly in the field of science fiction.

Riiiight...because leaving open hatches, for example, doesn't risk the very people who would need to leave those hatches open (because they would be closed over time, so the only way to assure that they stay open is to actually be there to confirm they stay that way).

Assassin: I'll target you through my own head and I'll get you! (see Richard Hammond, Top Gear)

...

It's not a very practical idea, no.

It is just a theory that it was hit by a waterspout. I haven't seen anywhere reports that anyone has any evidence that a waterspout hit the boat, or that anyone knows that the boat was hit by a waterspout, merely that there was one in the area.

Agreed, but irrespective of that, I really do feel sorry for his wife, who has lost both her husband as well as their daughter. My sincere condolences to her.

I suppose people who are celebrating and feeling slightly untouchable might take more risks than normal. Their chances in that trial were not great. Still makes my mind desperate for answers more satisfying than coincidence.

The probability of those two events happening so close to the conclusion of the trial is vanishingly small, but not zero.

To the dead, may they rest in peace. To the bereaved, our sympathies.

Okay. how would you work out that probability then? To calculate a probability, you need to state in advance (1) the set of all things which fall into the class of events under consideration that could potentially occur, (2) the probability distribution over that set of events (which might or might not be uniform), and (3) the subset of those events for which you want to know the probability.

So... e.g.,

Would you include cases where the victim was not Lynch, but someone else, say, any business tycoon and (one of) his associates?

Did it have to be a waterspout or would some other unpredictable weather phenomenon make the cut?

Would it count if the trial was for something different? Or there was no trial, but perhaps something else contentious going on with the victims?

Over what period are we considering the probability? A year? A decade? A century? A millennium?

How close together in time do the deaths have to be to count?

...

...

...

I'm sure you can think of a few zillion more.

I know I've already done so in this thread, but I'm again going to have to leave the last word on coincidence to Richard Feynman:

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”

And as I also have said elsewhere; to make it truly fit, you'd need to paraphrase Feynman.

“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate A1. An incredible, almost unbelievably rare sighting. And what's even more amazing is, yesterday I saw the license plate A2, which is also incredibly rare!! Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see two of the absolute rarest plates possible, 2 nights in a row? Amazing!”

The problem is, I guess, that many people do not appreciate the difference between those scenarios, or even recognise them as distinct.

Human intuition for probability and statistics is notoriously rubbish. We are evolved to see patterns everywhere - we are inclined to overfit the world (to varying degree... conspiracy theorists sit at one end of that spectrum).

So I asked him, 'The car accident was pretty easy. But how did you do the tornado?' He smiled...

Damn, when tech barons fall foul of the Chinese authorities they just disappear for a few months.

On a yacht named ‘Bayesian’. I mean… what are the odds??

K = 17036 (p = 1e-17)

It was during his Lynett Systems venture that Lynch designed a synthesiser that was marketed as the Cheetah MD800. Cheetah are probably best known for computer peripherals such as joysticks during the home computer boom of the 1980s, but branched out into affordable and often innovative music equipment. The MD800 was a curious machine and rushed out as Cheetah were in financial trouble. Regardless of the controversy that surrounded him in recent years, Lynch was clearly a very smart guy with achievements in a surprisingly broad range of areas.

"Regardless of the controversy that surrounded him in recent years, Lynch was clearly a very smart guy with achievements in a surprisingly broad range of areas."

And a tragedy that so many of his final years were spent battling the gormless corporate retards of HP, who bought a business they didn't understand, and then tried to stitch him up when they got a bad case of buyer's remorse. Bastards, the lot of them.

You wrote in the article "Autonomy was floated...." . While a good colloquial usage, under the circumstances, seems infelicitous.

While a good colloquial usage, under the circumstances, seems infelicitous.

You are Jacob Rees-Mogg and I claim my five pounds...

I'm so sad to hear this. He was a Cambridge hero with his success. First Hamish Harding and now Mike Lynch.

At what point do we just say to Cambridge billionaires to stop going on board exotic "ocean going" vessels?

Hero ?

Why would he be anyones hero ?

Heroes are firefighters who risk their lives to save people from fire, or medical staff who work above and beyond the call of duty to help everyone that they do....

Billionaires fakes are not heroes...

He pulled an HP on HP....he reported that the ink levels were higher than they actually are.

Don't you mean lower, at least in HP's case?

Making money certainly doesn't make you a good person, but it doesn't mean you're evil either.

I think the obituary makes clear that Lynch was a gifted person who was successful largely due to his own work. Yes, he and others made a packet selling Autonomy to HP, but this was (and probably still is) par for the course for the industry: HP wanted to expand into services and was determined to by Autonomy at any price.

Why are you such a deeply, deeply unpleasant individual? There is no need for it. If you can't say something nice about somebody, ESPECIALLY on an article about their death, just zip it.

Condolences to his wife, what a horrendous experience.

There are certainly questions about how it sank considering a neighboring boat managed to stay afloat despite the weather conditions.

Also I thought modern boats were all supposed to be buoyant.

I do hope it's properly investigated and understood.

Personally, I always thought all boats were supposed to be buoyant, it's sort of what makes them boats.

The Herald of Free Enterprise was buoyant until someone forgot to close the back doors and let the water in. It sounds like something similar may have happened here, as Italian police divers found that the hatch was open. This could have easily led to the boat becoming unstable (and less buoyant) in extreme conditions like those reported at the time of the accident.

Either way, this is a terrible and horrific thing to happen to any family, especially as it involves his daughter. It's truly horrendous and must have been terrifying for everyone involved. My heart goes out to anyone affected by this tragedy, and I wish them all the best. It should remind us all that irrespective of wealth, success or anything else, we're all subject to the laws of physics and the random terrors that may arise in our day-to-day lives.

Look like something similar happened here.

You know that old phrase "Batten down the hatches"?

Ever wondered why you hear it?

Multiple (small) portholes --> 1 big door left open.

The UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch are investigating.

The Herald of Free Enterprise. I remember being a kid and seeing that on the news. Just looking it up again and to here the management failing. When the captain raised concerns there was no indication when the doors were open or closed. A £5 bell system would of helped yet, they rejected it. They should of all been prisoned for manslaughter. When you become so penny pinching you put lives at risk. Much like Boeing now.

And I see this qoute

“An alarming number of disasters are caused by sheer greed, putting profits before people.”

— Barbara Hooks, "Sydney Morning Herald"

https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Herald-of-Free-Enterprise-Disaster