Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 375 posts

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

#311

Post by hutzlibu »

swombat wrote: post #302
crispyambulance wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like quite a normal UI from an "internal" government or enterprise application point of view. In this case, the citizens of Hawaii paid for the bad system design with 48 minutes of existential horror. But these kinds of mistakes happens ALL THE TIME with "enterprise applications." Oracle has similar horrendous UX for their EBS (Enterprise Business Suite), so does SAP, Siemens, etc. People regularly make cost…

Somewhat controversially, I wonder if that existential horror was really so bad. I can think of worse ways to spend 48 minutes that contemplating the reality of your mortality, the fact that you could very well be dead at any moment with no warning whatsoever. It makes you re-evaluate your priorities, maybe makes you stop putting off the life changes you were thinking about that seemed like they could wait until next…

Or it will get them killed, once there is a real alarm and they sit down to meditate instead of seeking shelter ...

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

#312

Post by crispyambulance »

swombat wrote: post #302
crispyambulance wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like quite a normal UI from an "internal" government or enterprise application point of view. In this case, the citizens of Hawaii paid for the bad system design with 48 minutes of existential horror. But these kinds of mistakes happens ALL THE TIME with "enterprise applications." Oracle has similar horrendous UX for their EBS (Enterprise Business Suite), so does SAP, Siemens, etc. People regularly make cost…

Somewhat controversially, I wonder if that existential horror was really so bad. I can think of worse ways to spend 48 minutes that contemplating the reality of your mortality, the fact that you could very well be dead at any moment with no warning whatsoever. It makes you re-evaluate your priorities, maybe makes you stop putting off the life changes you were thinking about that seemed like they could wait until next…

I think that for anyone who has kids, those minutes could very well have been unimaginably awful.

I guess you can think of it like waterboarding. Waterboarding doesn't harm anyone, it forces one to contemplate mortality, but it is also something so terrible that one would not wish on anybody.

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

#313

Post by nokcha »

jdmichal wrote: post #153
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…

> 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. Otherwis…

>Providing work to the government without the government paying for it is illegal.

The Anti-Deficiency Act only prohibits "voluntary" services, not "gratuitous" services. Prior to the passage of the law, it was not unusual for cash-strapped gov't agencies to accept "voluntary" services (i.e., no formal obligation to pay for them) but then pay for them later after being allocated more funds. Congress didn't like this so it outlawed the practice. However, if someone wants to donate services to the gov't and executes a written agreement to not accept payment, then it is legal for the government to accept the free services. See, e.g., https://www.gao.gov/assets/450/441639.pdf

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

#314

Post by CaptSpify »

naravara wrote: post #266
CaptSpify wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Oh yeah, Im not saying it's easy, just that it leads to better workflows and efficiencies for end-users.

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

#315

Post by mulmen »

scrapcode wrote: post #264
nulagrithom wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?"

Really underrated advice. If someone asks you for something you know is wrong make sure they get full credit.

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

#316

Post by cialowicz »

sjs382 wrote: post #114

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-opposite-of-fitts-law/ In the cockpit of every jet fighter is a brightly painted lever that, when pulled, fires a small rocket engine underneath the pilot's seat, blowing the pilot, still in his seat, out of the aircraft to parachute safely to earth. Ejector seat levers can only be used once, and their consequences are significant and irreversible. Applications must have ejector seat…

Ejection at a moment's notice has to be simple and easy, and so accidental ejections still occur:

* http://www.vfp62.com/f14_rio.html

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/02/south-africa-p...

I'd argue that very few computer applications need something that works like an ejector seat lever. In most software applications you have more than milliseconds or seconds to make decisions about big, dramatic (and potentially irreversible) changes, and thus they should have multiple levels of confirmation.

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

#317

Post by WalterBright »

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…

There is a bit of a tension here. For a missile alert, every second faster the alert goes out, there are lives saved. Having an "are you sure?" request for confirmation is probably a bad tradeoff.

A better idea might be an "Oops, belay that!" next to it so it can be cancelled just as quickly.

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

#318

Post by WalterBright »

crispyambulance wrote: post #61
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…

It looks like quite a normal UI from an "internal" government or enterprise application point of view. In this case, the citizens of Hawaii paid for the bad system design with 48 minutes of existential horror. But these kinds of mistakes happens ALL THE TIME with "enterprise applications." Oracle has similar horrendous UX for their EBS (Enterprise Business Suite), so does SAP, Siemens, etc. People regularly make cost…

> But these kinds of mistakes happens ALL THE TIME with "enterprise applications."

Such misteackes in the cockpit of an airliner are deadly, which is why a great deal of effort is expended to prevent such mistakes. Unfortunately,

1. bad UI design is usually only obvious in hindsight

2. doing good UI design is expensive, and not always worth the effort

Of course, I face the same sorts of issues in designing a programming language (D), so this topic is of continuing interest for me.

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

#319

Post by mulmen »

daveid wrote: post #157
7952 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do we have a button pushing clerk involved in this process at all?

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

#320

Post by [deleted] »

evanwise wrote: post #181
andygates wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

J random local civilian warning system really doesn't have to be as tight as "don't blow up the world". There's a scale, here.

The back-up nuclear launch code for the Minuteman missile system used to be 00000000. You have far too much faith in humanity.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN