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It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

washingtonpost.com

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Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#101

Post by nsxwolf »

jklowden wrote: post #88
nsxwolf wrote: post #63

I think this whole thing could be seen as a blessing in disguise, but I don't hear anyone talking about it. We seem totally unprepared for this kind of event. The message said take shelter, so why were people running around screaming and crying in the streets? People were throwing their kids into storm drains. Clever, but what happens to them after that? Where do we go? How long do we have to stay there? Who is going…

No one stopped caring. What we stopped doing was pretending the civilian population could be protected against nuclear holocaust. The bomb that obliterated Hiroshima was a toy next to a thermonuclear bomb, which is 1000 times as powerful. If one lands on Oahu, there won't be anyone to pass out iodine pills in Hawaii, or anyone to pass them out to. Hawaii is just stupid to spend a nickel on an early warning system. Th…

Looking at NUKEMAP [1] and playing with Honolulu as a target using the various weapons that are common to nuclear arsenals your claims just sound totally false.

It seems like there would be a great chance of survivability in many areas if one were properly sheltered. This doesn't even take into account that Oahu is a mountain which would shield many inhabitants from the air blast.

I frankly am glad you are not in charge of the early warning system in Hawaii.

[1] http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#102

Post by antonkm »

dhruvmittal wrote: post #69
antonkm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a developer were in a position to actually change this, the options should be in separate lists, or even separate pages. If only CSS and HTML is available, they should be in two columns. The screenshots are so bad, not even the juniors I work with would consider deploying this. It's mind boggling.

>The screenshots are so bad, not even the juniors I work with would consider deploying this. It's mind boggling. Not defending the UI too much but I'm imagining this is something built and deployed on government contract in the late 90s or early 2000s (when it was considered high technology that they could do this from a web page in the first place?), occasionally migrated to whatever marginally newer system is requi…

I think you're a bit off with the time frame. The system sends push notifications to citizens in a specific area, or am I mistaken? Are these texts?

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#103

Post by gonehome »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #96
nsxwolf wrote: post #63

I think this whole thing could be seen as a blessing in disguise, but I don't hear anyone talking about it. We seem totally unprepared for this kind of event. The message said take shelter, so why were people running around screaming and crying in the streets? People were throwing their kids into storm drains. Clever, but what happens to them after that? Where do we go? How long do we have to stay there? Who is going…

For whatever reason there came to be a general belief that the drills were pointless or just propaganda. In reality they were very worthwhile and provided meaningful preparedness training. The bomb isn't what always kills people: it's the building falling on top of you that will kill or maim you, and knowing what to do when the building is falling down can drastically improve your chances of survival. The assumption…

Part of it is that there's a public risk with this sense of 'preparedness'.

If large amounts of people feel comfortable with nuclear war breaking out because they have their bomb shelter stocked in the backyard that poses an existential risk for everyone.

While people may overestimate the vaporization radius of a specific bomb we definitely don't want a larger underestimation of the affect of large scale nuclear conflict.

This was kind of the point of the pugwash conference, to remove nuclear weapons from political escalation more generally. If we're not successful at this and it escalates or becomes political that might be the end of it.

“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto/

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#104

Post by DKnoll »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #35
Chaebixi wrote: post #19

There was a very similar incident in 1971 ("code word hatefulness"). Back then, three tapes were kept next to a EBS transmitter, two real alerts and one for testing. One day, an operator accidentally loaded the real alert rather than the correct test alert, and many stations prepared to tell the country the nuclear war was imminent. The fix was to: > …In the past three tapes, one for the test and two for actual emerg…

That's a good example. Shockingly poor foresight. It's similar to the "A gun is always loaded" principle. Unless you can tell at a glance that a firearm is not in a ready-to-fire state, you treat it as if it is. People are clumsy and forgetful, and you only have to mess up once. Leaving the live rounds right next to the blanks, in that way, is pretty indefensible. (Ignoring of course that blanks can still kill, for t…

A blank round looks totally different from a 'live' round with a projectile.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#105

Post by turc1656 »

This doesn't add up for me and doesn't pass the smell test. Looking at that dashboard and the way it's set up and knowing PACOM stands for Pacific Command, I'm not buying this story at all. Look at the way that screen is designed. You don't just click one of those and it sends the alert off. The link sets the type of alert (i.e. Amber) and the destination/recipients (i.e county, statewide, etc.). It doesn't set the content. Logically, this must be true. An amber alert needs specifics like, most commonly, the license plate of a vehicle. That means someone clicked that link and then manually filled out the text "this is not a drill". That makes this peculiar sentence from the article make more sense - "I wish I could say there was a simple reason for why it took so long to get the correction to the false alert out". That line from the article struck me as odd the first time around, especially since no explanation at all was offered from what I saw. I believe they really thought there were incoming missiles and that's why they didn't rescind the alert immediately. Let's also remember that when this alert went out the person who sent it as well as anyone else working with them would have received it on their own phones and someone surely would have said "holy shit you just sent out a real nuclear war alert!" And then they would have gone back and filled out different text/content for an updated alert. There is precisely zero chance it took 38 whole minutes for everyone in that place to realize it was a real alert and figure out how to send a follow up.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#106

Post by ghostly_s »

turc1656 wrote: post #105

This doesn't add up for me and doesn't pass the smell test. Looking at that dashboard and the way it's set up and knowing PACOM stands for Pacific Command, I'm not buying this story at all. Look at the way that screen is designed. You don't just click one of those and it sends the alert off. The link sets the type of alert (i.e. Amber) and the destination/recipients (i.e county, statewide, etc.). It doesn't set the c…

It's possible the test procedure does send an authentic-looking alert to the devices of staff at this facility? Even in that case I would think their phones would be ringing off the phone in seconds with incoming calls from loved ones wondering what the hell is going on...

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#107

Post by evfanknitram »

vpribish wrote: post #53
jpindar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fucked up law. If some guys in a bar start arguing about a spilled drink and one says "I'm gonna punch you!", that shouldn't be considered terrorism! Terrorism used to mean violence or a real threat of violence committed for political reasons. Now it just means any crime committed by someone whose motives (or whose ethnic group) the speaker disapproves of.

it's not "terrorism" it's a "terroristic threat" - same root, but different words and very different meaning as commonly used. no one is equating a drunken bar confrontation and suicide bombing, except you.

He didn't equate them though, that was his whole point.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#108

Post by bonesss »

nsxwolf wrote: post #101
jklowden wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one stopped caring. What we stopped doing was pretending the civilian population could be protected against nuclear holocaust. The bomb that obliterated Hiroshima was a toy next to a thermonuclear bomb, which is 1000 times as powerful. If one lands on Oahu, there won't be anyone to pass out iodine pills in Hawaii, or anyone to pass them out to. Hawaii is just stupid to spend a nickel on an early warning system. Th…

Looking at NUKEMAP [1] and playing with Honolulu as a target using the various weapons that are common to nuclear arsenals your claims just sound totally false. It seems like there would be a great chance of survivability in many areas if one were properly sheltered. This doesn't even take into account that Oahu is a mountain which would shield many inhabitants from the air blast. I frankly am glad you are not in cha…

And to extend this hypothetical a little: the nuclear arsenal of people attacking the US is not as good as the one in the US.

Odds are anyone dumb enough to throw a nuke at the US is doing so with some really cunning plan in mind hoping for retaliation, and doing so with a nuke that's far from optimal. Russia and China are better served by eating up the US economy (and government!), than balls-to-the-wall war, so it's more likely an country that 'also has nukes' than the players with the real budgets.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#109

Post by turc1656 »

ghostly_s wrote: post #106
turc1656 wrote: post #105

This doesn't add up for me and doesn't pass the smell test. Looking at that dashboard and the way it's set up and knowing PACOM stands for Pacific Command, I'm not buying this story at all. Look at the way that screen is designed. You don't just click one of those and it sends the alert off. The link sets the type of alert (i.e. Amber) and the destination/recipients (i.e county, statewide, etc.). It doesn't set the c…

It's possible the test procedure does send an authentic-looking alert to the devices of staff at this facility? Even in that case I would think their phones would be ringing off the phone in seconds with incoming calls from loved ones wondering what the hell is going on...

Exactly. No matter what, they would have been contacted by the outside world, probably directly by Admiral Harris (the commander of the Pacific Fleet). 38 minutes makes no sense at all unless they were really trying to figure out if they were under attack or not.

They probably viewed this admission of error as being less embarrassing as not knowing that they weren't under attack when Japan released a statement within a few minutes saying it wasn't true. They look even more incompetent in that scenario.

Re: It Was Bad UX, not a “Wrong Button” in Hawaii

#110

Post by pixl97 »

DKnoll wrote: post #104
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good example. Shockingly poor foresight. It's similar to the "A gun is always loaded" principle. Unless you can tell at a glance that a firearm is not in a ready-to-fire state, you treat it as if it is. People are clumsy and forgetful, and you only have to mess up once. Leaving the live rounds right next to the blanks, in that way, is pretty indefensible. (Ignoring of course that blanks can still kill, for t…

A blank round looks totally different from a 'live' round with a projectile.

Don't assume there is just one kind of blank, and don't assume blanks can't kill you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_(cartridge)#/media/File:...

The first bullet here is a blank.

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