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The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

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Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#81

Post by gpderetta »

locallost wrote: post #29

Everything's possible, but there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane. They would've done because they are evil by nature, or at least perceived as such. In that case the media and the public buys into its own reality, but of course the UI discussion could be a distraction from the public maybe starting to question if that's actually the reality. Also from the Wiki page about t…

To be fair, Iran mistakenly shot down an Ukrainian civilian plane only a few years ago, again on a period of heightened tension. They admitted to the mistake a few days later and I don't remember there was a widespread suggestion of second motives.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#82

Post by helsinkiandrew »

tlb wrote: post #54
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - but the implications of reassigning the number immediately to another contact seems something that should have been noticed in the design phase. > Vincennes assigned her the tracking number 4474; Sides assigned her 4131. Aegis unified the contacts under the number 4131. 4474 was then available for re-use, so Aegis assigned it to a US A-6 bomber, which happened to be descending. > But he didn't realize that its…

Global commercial flight traffic averages around 100k flights per day. I don't know what fraction is within the radar range of a big ship in a busy area, but maybe 10k? So it's not trivial to avoid reuse within a day while still having 4-digit numbers. Especially when contacts are assigned numbers independently by multiple ships and then reconciled.

> I don't know what fraction is within the radar range of a big ship in a busy area maybe 10k? So it's not trivial to avoid reuse within a day while still having 4-digit numbers

So in the design phase that should come up as an issue and you would surely use 5 digit numbers

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#83

Post by [deleted] »

bonzini wrote: post #74
knallfrosch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a UX error when your helicopter-carrier invades Iran after one of your helicopters invaded Iran. In wartime. What were these warships even doing in the PERSIAN gulf? And why do they shoot Iranian airplanes in Iranian airspace while they themselves are in Iran? I image "UX error" wouldn't cut it if a chinese missile cruiser shot down an US airliner while steaming up the Hudson.

Presumably some mission during the Iran–Iraq war? Iraq was an ally of the US at the time.

[deleted]

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#84

Post by meeuwer »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #71
kranke155 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine currently suffers from severe undercount. The RF forces sieged Mariopol like a medieval city at the start of the war, creating large scale suffering. Afaik there was no water or power and people were melting ice for water. The civilian casualties on the Ukraine war are at least 100,000+ maybe a multiple of that number.

While we're on the subject of "under-counting", there is no official count of the number of civilians killed during the US Gov's invasion of Iraq. No sense counting what you don't want to know and don't want to be accounted for? US voters / citizens certainly don't care. Independent sources put it at 100,000+. I've randomly read 2x to 3x that but 100k+ is bad enough. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/ci…

Whatever the number, it was “worth it”.

https://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#85

Post by subtra3t »

rglullis wrote: post #40
JimDabell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the recent OpenAI events that were posted here were links to Twitter and I’ve seen plenty of people point this out as evidence that Twitter still is at the centre.

The OpenAI saga was such an outlier in the usual news cycle, it is hard to use it as a measure of anything.

You can't call any piece of evidence that happens to not support your theory as being an outlier. And even then the OpenAI saga is probably the most important development in tech in the last 10 years (conservatively).

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#86

Post by oddmiral »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #71
kranke155 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine currently suffers from severe undercount. The RF forces sieged Mariopol like a medieval city at the start of the war, creating large scale suffering. Afaik there was no water or power and people were melting ice for water. The civilian casualties on the Ukraine war are at least 100,000+ maybe a multiple of that number.

While we're on the subject of "under-counting", there is no official count of the number of civilians killed during the US Gov's invasion of Iraq. No sense counting what you don't want to know and don't want to be accounted for? US voters / citizens certainly don't care. Independent sources put it at 100,000+. I've randomly read 2x to 3x that but 100k+ is bad enough. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/ci…

There is official count of number of civilians murdered by Soviets in 1932-1934 by hunger (Holodomor) - 7 millions as declared by Russian Duma on 02.04.2008.

However, these are adults only, because children deaths are not counted at that time. With school-age children, for which records are stored, number raises to 10.5 million. Number of under school age children died because of artificial hunger in 1932-1934 is still unknown.

I hope, this will help to calculate number of deaths in Iraq.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#88

Post by mistermann »

locallost wrote: post #29

Everything's possible, but there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane. They would've done because they are evil by nature, or at least perceived as such. In that case the media and the public buys into its own reality, but of course the UI discussion could be a distraction from the public maybe starting to question if that's actually the reality. Also from the Wiki page about t…

> According to Entman, framing techniques were used to frame the Korean Airlines incident as...

Framing is a major problem in almost every single problem Humans have, yet it gets almost no attention....which I suspect may not be accidental especially considering how useful it is (it's getting heavy usage in this very thread, wow how surprising).

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#89

Post by raincole »

oddmiral wrote: post #86
chiefalchemist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're on the subject of "under-counting", there is no official count of the number of civilians killed during the US Gov's invasion of Iraq. No sense counting what you don't want to know and don't want to be accounted for? US voters / citizens certainly don't care. Independent sources put it at 100,000+. I've randomly read 2x to 3x that but 100k+ is bad enough. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/ci…

There is official count of number of civilians murdered by Soviets in 1932-1934 by hunger (Holodomor) - 7 millions as declared by Russian Duma on 02.04.2008. However, these are adults only, because children deaths are not counted at that time. With school-age children, for which records are stored, number raises to 10.5 million. Number of under school age children died because of artificial hunger in 1932-1934 is sti…

> I hope, this will help to calculate number of deaths in Iraq.

It won't and there is not reason to think it will. It was a completely different situation. So keep your hopes to yourself.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#90

Post by kortilla »

locallost wrote: post #29

Everything's possible, but there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane. They would've done because they are evil by nature, or at least perceived as such. In that case the media and the public buys into its own reality, but of course the UI discussion could be a distraction from the public maybe starting to question if that's actually the reality. Also from the Wiki page about t…

That’s a stupid comparison because the USSR intentionally shot down a plane without trying to contact it and then didn’t cooperate at all on search efforts.

Additionally, the pilot positively identified it was a passenger jet due to the double decker windows but shot anyway because they were shooting down “spy planes”, not anything that was an actual threat.

This is in contrast to the US incident where they tried to contact the plane on 10 different frequencies (3 civil aviation) and were operating under the understanding the plane was a fighter carrying missiles.

There is obviously going to be some media bias, but equivocating these two events is terrible from a “moral outrage” perspective.

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