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

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

octodon.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 695 posts

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

#151

Post by nova22033 »

knallfrosch wrote: post #42
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…

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.

these warships even doing in the PERSIAN gulf

Iran doesn't own the PERSIAN gulf any more than India owns the INDIAN ocean.

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

#152

Post by fmajid »

chadash wrote: post #145
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…

> * there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane* If Iran shot down a US plane and then immediately admitted it was a mistake and helped investigate, I don’t think this is true. People would still be angry and a UI mistake doesn’t really exonerate you from that anger.

Iran actually shot down a Ukrainian plane by mistake. They took their sweet time admitting it, but did eventually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...

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

#153

Post by neffo »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #141
Aissen wrote: post #37

Pro-tip to those unused to mastodon web-ui: you can click the eye on the top right of the center column (next to Back) to expand all posts at once.

Does anyone know the reasoning for not having the posts expanded by default?

Posts aren't limited to an arbitrary length in activity pub, this is the same UI logic for showing a thread in the main feed. Twitter does something similar for bluecheck long posts.

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

#154

Post by switch007 »

dontlaugh wrote: post #136
School-Cotton wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Persian Gulf, despite the name, is not Iranian territorial waters. Anybody can go there. Iran would be well within its rights to send its warships into the Atlantic Ocean, yes.

And what do you think the reaction of Americans would be if that happened? And especially if those warships were prepared to shoot?

American foreign policy is fully subscribed to the idea of American exceptionalism, as are many of their citizens and media outlets. Hypocrisy means nothing to them and won’t shame them in to not doing something

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

#155

Post by brabel »

contravariant wrote: post #137
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…

I mean that's the fundamental attribution error isn't it? If we do it it's because of external factors, if they do it it's because they're inherently bad people.

We see this in much smaller scale everywhere. When someone you don't like does something wrong , it's surely because they're such an idiot... when it's someone you really like, it's definitely due to external causes. Not to mention simple discrimination, which is rampant, seemingly no matter how much we try to make that go away.

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

#156

Post by ninkendo »

mattszaszko wrote: post #3

I'm so conflicted reading this story. On one hand, yes, there were choices made during the design of the system that directly contributed to this tragedy. And a lot of innocent lives were lost, so saying that's "shit happens, it's an edge case" rings very hollow. On the other hand, this was a very peculiar set of circumstances, very much an edge case. Is it reasonable to expect designers of combat systems to triple c…

It really peeves me to hear the phrase “edge case” used as a defense of incorrect software. As if software should not be expected to deal with edge cases.

Edge cases are not rare. If you have a lot of people using your system, or people who use it a long time, hitting an edge case increases in likelihood to the point that it becomes inevitable. It’s a fallacy to think that an edge case being mathematically unlikely implies that it is unlikely to ever happen. See also murphy’s law.

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

#157

Post by brabel »

lgrapenthin wrote: post #93
xkbarkar wrote: post #87

What a terrible platform to present an interesting story. What wrong with a good old fashioned article style blog ? I admit I am so turned off by the format I only made it hlf way throught the thread.

I gave up when I realized that I have to click on each "tweet" to read more

And when you try to scroll down with the keyboard, it moves a full "tweet" down so you can't actually read what you were trying to.

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

#159

Post by pavo-etc »

xkbarkar wrote: post #87

What a terrible platform to present an interesting story. What wrong with a good old fashioned article style blog ? I admit I am so turned off by the format I only made it hlf way throught the thread.

Here is the thread unrolled:

https://unroller.zachmanson.com/threads/https:/octodon.socia...

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

#160

Post by subroutine »

Interesting to see this on HN. I currently work for the company that redesigned the HMI/UI following this incident. Or rather, it's how my company was founded. In the aftermath, the US Navy Command in San Diego contacted several UCSD professors in the Cognitive Science and Psychology department who specialized in high-impact decision making under stress and cognitive load. The Navy was apparently impressed with the detailed analysis and recs provided by these faculty and continued to collaborate with these folks on this an other projects. Eventually they were getting so much work from the Navy they founded a company focused on human factors engineering and interface design for complex systems.

The two original founders recently retired and our new CEO is a former Captain of the USS Zumwalt.

Post reply on HN