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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

#321

Post by WalterBright »

noir_lord wrote: post #203
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…

> 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,…

I don't use email on my iphone. It's because I receive 400+ emails a day, mostly spam. I need a "delete all" button, as deleting them one at a time is untenable.

But there isn't a "delete all" button, presumably because people would use it and complain that they wiped out all their email.

The end result, however, is the iphone email is completely unusable for me.

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

#322

Post by notyourday »

alkonaut wrote: post #297
notyourday wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And being fired isn’t just a risk you should be willing to take, it’s the required course of action here. With any luck you could get a superior in trouble by going above their heads or reporting to a relevant authority. Doing things that are immoral/dangerous/stupid because you need to eat is not an excuse.

That's a rather naive view of the work environment. There's a myriad of reasons why it is hierarchical of which not the smallest one is so people down who have a limited field of vision and expertise do not jump into decision making above their pay grade. Doing it once may be acceptable but the issue of course is that one is unlikely to know when is the time do that stick the neck out. Doing it multiple times pretty much guarantees that one would find out that he or she is imminently replaceable.

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

#323

Post by itronitron »

jdietrich wrote: post #166
itronitron wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big problem is that people that don't have a lot of experience with design treat design decisions as subjective and arbitrary when in fact there is a lot of science to back up certain design choices (human vision, cognitive psychology, and not A/B testing.) As a result the approval process for any design, whether the initial or a redesign, gets stuck on the desks of various people that either don't feel qua…

A lot of people that do have a lot of experience with design treat design decisions as subjective and arbitrary. Design is often taught as an arts subject, with woefully little science content. The rise of UX as a distinct discipline reflects this lack of scientific thinking in the mainstream design community.

I agree and I think that art and design students would benefit from classes on (or exposure to) the human visual system and neuroscience/cognitive psychology. A lot of the intuition behind subjective decisions in the arts can be further understood/explored/refined through the relevant science. For anyone interested in this topic I highly recommend the book "Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing" by Margaret Livingstone.

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

#324

Post by mulmen »

MicroBerto wrote: post #178

For those of you who don't believe a single thing we're being told about this situation -- including this screenshot -- just know that you're not alone. You don't need to question the narrative publicly like some of us do, but it's always good to keep an open mind about everything we're told, and sadly, that means considering the possibility that there have been more lies than truths told since Saturday. Hopefully so…

I'm not sure how to generalize this advice without becoming a paranoid conspiracy theorist. If we maintain an "open mind" about everything we are told and the "real story" comes out later how do we know it is real?

If we are able to identify the later story as real that means we have some other mechanism for determining truthfulness which could be applied to the current information.

Do you have any reason to believe we have been lied to? Can you point to any sources? Your vague statements suggest you know something but are unwilling to reveal it. That is a red flag for me.

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

#325

Post by mulmen »

aviv wrote: post #186

What I find interesting is not this screenshot, but the fact that most commenters here don't even question if we are being told the truth as to what happened. Yet here we are talking about UI/UX.

I don't see why we would doubt it, what do you believe happened? Can you substantiate your belief?

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

#326

Post by Karunamon »

astura wrote: post #20
Karunamon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really hope there’s no JS on that page. Because if there is, given the poor design, it’s probably vulnerable to XSRF. Gives a whole new meaning to critical vulnerabilities. Sheesh.

XSRF has nothing to do with JavaScript. A site is vulnerable to XSRF if it doesn't use tokens when performing critical operations, critical operations are (usually) performed using HTTP POST, which can be done via form submission... token generation and validation is done server side... You can perform a successful XSRF attack in a browser with javascript completely disabled.

Wait, so what am I thinking of? The phenomena where if you can get a website to display output of your choosing in a non sanitized way, you can abuse that to cause code to be executed by the user.

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

#327

Post by mulmen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
rorykoehler wrote: post #123

Why is the a manual UI to send out an incoming missile alert. Surely the alert should be sent automatically when the anti-missile system is engaged?

> Surely the alert should be sent automatically when the anti-missile system is engaged? This is a civilian system. Detection and anti-ballistic missile systems are military, specifically NORAD and the MDA. I agree that NORAD should have an API, though I suspect integrating it with civil defense systems will result in more such mistakes in the short run.

If there is no existing integration then how does the civilian system operator know to click this button?

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

#328

Post by mulmen »

astura wrote: post #215
rmc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope the people who are looking for intercontinental missles have some training.

The military monitors for intercontinental ballistic missile launches. If they detect one then they assess it. If after assessment they determine there is a threat to anyone they notify the appropriate agencies. A civilian in a totally different government agency is the one who pushes the notification button.

How is the notification sent from the military to the civilian agency? Does the civilian agency validate the notification? Why is it necessary or preferable for a human to do this instead of a computer?

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

#329

Post by mulmen »

WalterBright wrote: post #321
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,…

I don't use email on my iphone. It's because I receive 400+ emails a day, mostly spam. I need a "delete all" button, as deleting them one at a time is untenable. But there isn't a "delete all" button, presumably because people would use it and complain that they wiped out all their email. The end result, however, is the iphone email is completely unusable for me.

Why can't you use an email filter?

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

#330

Post by noobermin »

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…

I haven't seen this comment yet, although I expected it. It is time for those who design internal government applications to take it as seriously as other engineers who work on systems that, when mistakes are made, result in people being hurt or killed. This system clearly has that potential, so people need to take it as seriously as someone designing interfaces for NASA or the military, along with serious consequences of shoddy work.
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