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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

#261

Post by rhino369 »

astura wrote: post #66
ghaff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>maybe have to type a confirmation string Having to type out YES or some phrase is a fairly common "Are you really sure you want to do this??" sort of thing. I gather they're also looking at requiring a second person's confirmation which, if practical and very unlikely to make it impossible to send any message, seems reasonable as well.

Totally unscientific idea: Have PINs required for certain critical operations and post those PINs in multiple places around the facility. Each PIN is different for each operation. That way the user has to look up the PIN before sending out the "you're going to die" message.

Part of the problem is that these need to be sent quickly. An in bound ballistic missile could have only several minutes of warning or less. Make it too difficult and you waste thirty second looking up a pin. That could kill tens of thousands of people who couldn't get away from windows in time.

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

#262

Post by oftenwrong »

djaychela wrote: post #11
andrepd wrote: post #9

Yikes. Now consider this: this is the design for the missile warning system. It is possible, even likely, that some missile launch system has similar catastrophic UI. How we've not wiped ourselves off by accident so far is a miracle.

I take it you've read Command and Control [1]? A great, if worrying read on exactly that subject. It's luck, not judgement that something really terrible hasn't happened yet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)

Along the same lines: a whistleblower's account of problems in the UK's "Trident" nuclear defense program from 2015: https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/

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

#263

Post by freeflight »

fencepost wrote: post #252
Omnius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have just an a confirmation window with the the text that was about to be sent. "Everyone is going to die. Run but it won't help"... Is that want you wanted to send [Yes] [No]

If that confirmation window is on every message drill or not, then it would be completely useless. Users have been trained to click past/ignore pop-ups. I say this as someone who watches people log in on PCs and click past a useless (for them) Citrix dialog that includes a "stop asking" checkbox. Citrix added that checkbox some time ago, so these folks have been vacuously ignoring the entire thing at least once per b…

> If that confirmation window is on every message drill or not, then it would be completely useless. Users have been trained to click past/ignore pop-ups.

That would apply to something that's used routinely, I'm not sure this system is actually used that often. Do these emergency systems send out "this is a drill" messages really that regularly? As a non-US person that sounds like a quite scary way to live.

Even if it is something that gets used regularly, adding additional levels of confirmation, depending on the kind of alert that's gonna be sent out, would already go a long way of preventing this kind of mistake.

For the real deal add some bold and flashing text along the lines of "This is the NOT A DRILL message, are you sure about sending this?" which pops up as a second confirmation screen, while drill messages have only one confirmation screen.

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

#264

Post by scrapcode »

nulagrithom wrote: post #257
noir_lord wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People regularly make costly mistakes in shipping and receiving, purchasing and manufacturing because they have to deal with shitty confusing applications that look just like that screenshot. Currently unscrewing one of those as my day job. "Delete all production orders for period" - no confirmation, no ability to rollback (beyond me restoring from a backup) that kind of thing. It's not that it isn't user friendly,…

> "Delete all production orders for period" Hah! I built one of those once! The (very abbreviated) conversation went something like this: "I need a way to bulk delete orders." "Umm... Are you sure? I can't think of a good reason to delete a bunch of orders in production." "Yes. We absolutely need this." "Ok..." A short time later "Why does it ask me to confirm? Just make it do it." "Sure..." A week later, after resto…

"Sure! Can you put that in an e-mail?"

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

#265

Post by rhino369 »

cmiles74 wrote: post #245
jcranmer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ICBM will land about 30 minutes after it launches. At those kinds of timescales, every delay you put in somebody's path to issue the warning, even a few seconds, is going to be a cost measured in lives. How many people are you willing to kill to reduce the risk of a false alarm?

In my opinion, this begs the question: what was the population of Hawaii expected to do in response to this warning? From my reading of the articles, for the most part people did not know what to do. In their position, without a clear plan, I might just hug my partner and children that one last time. I wonder if there is a clear plan, and if there's a better way to communicate that to the population. That seems like…

There probably is a plan, but nobody wants to be taught it because of backlash to civil emergency plans.

The "Duck & Cover" stuff is lampooned for being rediculous, but it's actually what you should do. The idea that everyone will die from being incinerated in a nuclear blast is a misconception. Most people in America would survive the initial nuclear blast from a full Russian strike (and China, etc. have even smaller arsenals).

In the short term, act like you would in a Tornado. Basement or if you don't have one, an room with no windows.

Longer term--stay in side for as long as you can because fallout will disipate. The longer you don't go outside the better.

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

#266

Post by naravara »

CaptSpify wrote: post #222
IshKebab wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enterprise software is chosen by a manager who is told the feature list, but never uses the software. Usability is never considered because the manager never uses the software, and it's not really possible to evaluate usability on paper (they may say "this is really usable" and an application can still be really bad; if they say "it has feature X" and doesn't then you can sue them for breach of contract). Consumer so…

I think this is the key here. Why do we keep trusting the one person who never uses the actual product to decide which product everyone should use? I wish we could have a sane conversation about how UI's should be customizeable for the end user

>I wish we could have a sane conversation about how UI's should be customizeable for the end user

Depends a lot on context and the type of application, but a lot of end users get confused about where the line is between UI/UX and backend functionality.

A lot of things that might seem to be UI issues might actually have implications for things like resource consumption and application stability. It's a tough balance to strike.

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

#267

Post by yread »

joshstrange wrote: post #25

The thing that annoys me most about this situation is people complaining about how long it took to send out the "Sorry, there was no missile" message. Just as I expected these were hard-coded messages that were sent out by a button (link) click and not a free-form text area. There are many (good) reasons you want your program set up this way (let's ignore the rest of the terrible UI/UX for now). It makes complete sen…

If I was in the operator's place I would probably send all the other messages as well so that people know the system didn't work and don't go commit crimes/suicides thinking the world is gonna end

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

#269

Post by notyourday »

harleypig wrote: post #139
alkonaut wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a contractor or an employee, you do have the ability to do what you think is right despite what your employer says they want. But only to a point. People resist perceived change. You can improve the back-end all you want, as long as you don't make unexpected changes to the front-end. This includes something as simple as a clarifying pop-up, or a speed increase of a procedure.

> As a contractor or an employee, you do have the ability to do what you think is right despite what your employer says they want.

... as long as you do not mind being fired.

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

#270

Post by lowbloodsugar »

Alternatively, a foreign adversary is taking its hacking to the next level, and this is damage control pretending that it's not. Advanced warships that "accidentally" run into other ships. Paralyzing remote islands with missile warnings. This is like the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel, and our cool, calm, collected President with his military and CIA experience will see us through.
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