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USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#141

Post by dreamcompiler »

katastic wrote: post #119
Animats wrote: post #73

There was a ferry accident involving a similar transfer of control problem in New York harbor.[1] Ferries have a lot of maneuvering modes and directional thrusters, because they do so many dockings, and so they have a more complex control problem. The pilot put the system into a backup dumb mode while in cruise, then changed stations to where he could best see the dock while still in the wrong mode. Rammed the dock a…

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

It's truly awful. The last time I bought a car I wanted to take a hammer and smash the freaking "screen" because the UI was such a POS (VW Beetle). A 20-year-old radio is a better audio system, and the cheapest smartphone is a better navigation system than anything that comes in a car nowadays. But I suppose the manufacturers think they can't sell a car nowadays without "teh shiny screen." And they might be right.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#142

Post by dreamcompiler »

Cyph0n wrote: post #139
foobarian wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me started about TVs. When I grew up our family TV turned on in seconds, and pressing channel up/down reacted in tens of milliseconds.

To be fair, you weren't getting near-instantaneous full HD quality broadcasting with DVR support on your TV back then.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#143

Post by [deleted] »

katastic wrote: post #119
Animats wrote: post #73

There was a ferry accident involving a similar transfer of control problem in New York harbor.[1] Ferries have a lot of maneuvering modes and directional thrusters, because they do so many dockings, and so they have a more complex control problem. The pilot put the system into a backup dumb mode while in cruise, then changed stations to where he could best see the dock while still in the wrong mode. Rammed the dock a…

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

[deleted]

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#144

Post by Nition »

erydo wrote: post #94
Animats wrote: post #73

There was a ferry accident involving a similar transfer of control problem in New York harbor.[1] Ferries have a lot of maneuvering modes and directional thrusters, because they do so many dockings, and so they have a more complex control problem. The pilot put the system into a backup dumb mode while in cruise, then changed stations to where he could best see the dock while still in the wrong mode. Rammed the dock a…

As a devil's…inquisitor, I guess— I'm curious what the reasoning has been behind the Navy's (and WWII RAF's) preference for split/seniority control and in what situations that balances out, if any. Are those situations where some known, serious risk of error is mitigated by sharing responsibility? Is betting on experience over skill actually wrong, or is their implementation misguided? Or just not applicable to those…

Article says:

> Commander Alfredo J. Sanchez, "noticed the Helmsman (the watchstander steering the ship) having difficulty maintaining course while also adjusting the throttles for speed control."

If that's true and not just an excuse for an unnecessary command, then maybe it's still difficult trying to do both at once.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#146

Post by brians »

ams6110 wrote: post #108
Animats wrote: post #73

There was a ferry accident involving a similar transfer of control problem in New York harbor.[1] Ferries have a lot of maneuvering modes and directional thrusters, because they do so many dockings, and so they have a more complex control problem. The pilot put the system into a backup dumb mode while in cruise, then changed stations to where he could best see the dock while still in the wrong mode. Rammed the dock a…

It makes some sense to me. Conning officer instructs helmsman which direction to go. Helmsman then executes that and monitors/adjusts to stay on that heading without further attention. Same for speed. The officer is then free of the tasks of monitoring and adjusting speed and direction and can focus on what's happening outside of that.

Looking for good models for ops team improvement, I was just handed the Watch Officer's Handbook. It encourages new watch officers to give rudder orders, not desired headings.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#147

Post by Cyph0n »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #142
Cyph0n wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you weren't getting near-instantaneous full HD quality broadcasting with DVR support on your TV back then.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

> The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved.

> zero boot time

That's not going to happen, ever, but I'll assume you meant "faster" boot times.

Probably. Keep in mind that your average set-top box likely goes through a more complex secure boot process than most electronic devices you would ever interact with. Why? Because if people can run arbitrary firmware on a set-top box, your cable company would lose a shit ton of money.

> instantaneous channel switching

You are bound by the latency required to demodulate a signal being broadcast from some satellite ~30,000 km away from the receiver, decrypt the resulting stream, and finally decode it, all on the fly so you get a nice, continuous, stutter-free full HD broadcast.

I am no expert, so there is probably way more stuff happening behind the scene that someone else could probably shed light on. The point of my comment was to demonstrate that things can sometimes be more complicated than they seem at first glance.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#148

Post by jimktrains2 »

Cyph0n wrote: post #147
dreamcompiler wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's no reason one couldn't design a TV that had both full HD and zero boot time with instantaneous channel switching. The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness.

> The reason such TVs don't exist is simply engineering laziness. If your answer to the question "why can't a billion dollar industry provide me with instantaneous channel switching?" is "because they are lazy", you are severely misguided (at the very least!). There are hundreds of extremely talented engineers working full-time on these problems. If the solution were as easy as you propose, the issues would be solved…

When you change channels it has to wait for the next key frame before it can display video.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#149

Post by schlock509 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #91
tlb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the steam days, it was a major operation to adjust the output of an engine. Valve linkages had immediate effect on the output, but you also had to adjust the boiler heat input to keep the temperature within limits. Far enough back, there were men shoveling coal into the boilers who had to be told to slow down or speed up. Do you think it's mainly bureaucratic inertia that keeps it separate? Or is there something m…

> Valve linkages had immediate effect on the output, but you also had to adjust the boiler heat input to keep the temperature within limits. Can you not vent some of the steam, so the same volume of steam is being produced and the temperature the same but only some of it goes to the drive?

I think if the same volume of steam is being produced then it's going to cause problems regardless

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#150

Post by hliyan »

Actual naval experts in HN notwithstanding, I think it's worth remembering that a little knowledge, at times, can be a dangerous thing. This is true of many topics on HN that are only obliquely related to software engineering. Silicon Valley has earned a great deal of confidence by disrupting other industries by out-thinking their experts, but perhaps we should temper that confidence a little, least it becomes hubris...

Bottom line, if we're going to dismiss experts, I think we should be armed with a little more than the knowledge we garnered from an internet article.

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