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The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

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Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#151

Post by pavement »

Holy shit. That is not even a "pull down menu" as previously reported.

Good to know. This means that in Hawaii, you should only think about taking action if the magic FALSE ALARM notice never appears.

If the FALSE ALARM notice doesn't appear within an hour, it might just be that the false alarm guy is on lunch break. If it doesn't appear in 8 hours, it might mean that a shift change occurred without proper hand-off. If it fails to appear in 24 hours, a nuclear attack might actually be imminent, and you should check other sources, to determine if the alarm was, in fact, real.

This protocol ensures that archaeologists will receive a valid record, omitting the false alarm notice in the rocks on the other side. Eventual consistency ensures that before the archaeological record is written, a false alarm notice will appear, if the alarm was indeed false. In all other cases, the alarm is effectively revealed to history to be a true alert, at some point in the future, as yet to be determined.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#152

Post by [deleted] »

Clubber wrote: post #148
cstross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underline this, here's what happens when something goes wrong with an ejector seat: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-37475298 We probably won't ever know how many people died as a direct result of the Hawaii BMD mis-alert, but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on). Similarly, consider the warning signage…

>but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on). I'm assuming you meant you'd be surprised if that number was zero. It's awfully hard to, in good faith, directly associate a message with a death. I mean if you wanted to make it seem bigger than it was, you could associate any crash or heart related death that happened in that 38…

[deleted]

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#153

Post by jdmichal »

alkonaut wrote: post #73
whatever_dude wrote: post #19

It's easy to see how this is bad, and I bet dozens of designers are now creating alternatives for their dribble and Twitter appreciation, but the problem is probably what led to this, not this specifically. I can see it: a contractor started with a link that triggers a push notification, then someone requested another link, then another, then it grew from there, never having the ability to stop and rethink this from…

Incremental design doesn’t excuse the guy adding thing #2 or thing #3 not paying attention to the whole. Nor does being a contractor excuse it. You don’t get a contract job to add some links to a page. You are contracted to modify it (regardless of what the buyer said he wanted) - and you are responsible for not making it dangerous. Even if that means you can’t take the job. Someone reviewed the spec for this. Someon…

> You are contracted to modify it (regardless of what the buyer said he wanted) - and you are responsible for not making it dangerous.

Actually, with government contracts, you are legally obligated to perform only the task assigned. Providing work to the government without the government paying for it is illegal. And you are only being paid for what's in the contract. (This is actually overall a good thing. Otherwise, large companies with better margins could easily provide free value-adds to government customers to win contracts away from small shops with small margins.)

Now, in this case, yes maybe the contractual item could have been interpreted in a way that allowed a proper page redesign. However, I would never state that as a fact without having the requirements and also receiving agreement from the government customer over such changes.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#154

Post by jdietrich »

pc86 wrote: post #131
zimpenfish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a forward thinking developer saying "hey should we at least have colored buttons Accessibility becomes an issue for colourblind people then.

Not necessarily. Colorblind doesn't mean "everything is grey" it means you have trouble distinguishing between between a few, usually fairly specific colors. There are plenty of color schemes out that that are perfectly fine for colorblind folks, especially when you only need 2-3 distinct colors.

Nope. Dichromatic color deficiency is the most common form of color blindness, but about one in 20,000 people are completely unable to perceive color due to a variety of ophthalmic and neurological deficits. Even among dichromats, you can only reliably expect all users to be able to distinguish red and blue. It's probably not worth worrying about too much in most circumstances, but it is a relevant factor if you're designing safety-critical systems with a large user base.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#156

Post by jwmullally »

Fix proposal subthread. Can we harness HN collective intelligence to vote up some good suggestions?

Instructions:

* Reply with your suggested fix to this comment. (That way we can vote equally between suggestions, instead of having them being scattered throughout the thread).

* First line is simple one-line summary, optionally followed by a blank line then some exposition.

Example:

----------

Simple fix: Seperate links into 2 color coded sections, TEST and ACTIVE

Put each set of links into seperate divs, with different background colors or striped backgrounds.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#157

Post by daveid »

7952 wrote: post #134
koolba wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a situation like this having to type the full text of the message as a confirmation would work. Any reasonable person typing in “ This is not a drill... ” would pause half way through. It’s not the same as blindly clicking “Yes”.

Why not just make them type the message out manually every single time? Why is it a good idea to offer options at all?

Do you want a button pushing clerk to be able to write any message to millions of people over an emergency network? There is so much potential for disaster in that idea. Options is much better. Having the employee type out the predefined message word for word would really be a good confirmation though.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#159

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Clubber wrote: post #148
cstross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underline this, here's what happens when something goes wrong with an ejector seat: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-37475298 We probably won't ever know how many people died as a direct result of the Hawaii BMD mis-alert, but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on). Similarly, consider the warning signage…

>but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on). I'm assuming you meant you'd be surprised if that number was zero. It's awfully hard to, in good faith, directly associate a message with a death. I mean if you wanted to make it seem bigger than it was, you could associate any crash or heart related death that happened in that 38…

It shouldn't be hard to check if there's a spike in mortality above the median background around the period of the test.

Statistical significance will depend on the size of the spike.

Re: The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

#160

Post by MBCook »

giarc wrote: post #102
MBCook wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that was a misunderstanding based on initial information. This was tweeted by the official department in Hawaii.

The tweet linked is by civilbeat.com, not an official account. Correct me if I'm wrong and some official account also sent out this photo.

Oh, no, you’re right. That’s the one I saw but I misremembered.

But (looking again) I see in a reply they say the image was provided by the office of the Governer.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CivilBeat/status/9532704728204574...

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