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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

#201

Post by modo_mario »

kortilla wrote: post #90
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…

>10 different frequencies (3 civil aviation)

Those 7 others they couldn't receive. For the 3 cilivian ones they couldn't even know which aircraft it was directed at.

> and were operating under the understanding the plane was a fighter carrying missiles.

If they said they thought it was squawking on military mode II instead of mode III i'd believe em. The recordings say otherwise but few people making a mistake or the like happens. If they on top of that say they saw it dive whilst their equipment recorded the plane as climbing as well as other discrepancies that don't match up....

Sorry, I don't tend to believe it anymore. I'd assume it much more likely they were covering their asses with lies.

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

#202

Post by raxxorraxor »

immibis wrote: post #178
shenberg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're seriously suggesting that attacking unarmed civilians intentionally, killing parents in front of their children and then kidnapping the children, slaughtering defenseless party-goers, etc. is what I any resistance movement would do, that's ridiculous. If Hamas would only have attacked military targets, there would be no legitimacy to Israel's actions. However, what actually happened was that they attacked p…

To paraphrase JFK, those who make peaceful resistance impossible make violent resistance inevitable.

This would justify the retaliation by Israel to any extend.

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

#203

Post by twixfel »

naasking wrote: post #190
addicted wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s “Russia made no efforts to contact” and “Russia made no efforts to search” both of which indicate it was because Russia was up to no good. Funny how you ignore the reasons the commenter you’re replying to gives to indicate Russia did it because it was evil, reasons which do not apply to the U.S. case, and pretend they never gave those explanations at all.

The point is that 1) those reasons are themselves assuming a particular value system in order to judge evil (for someone who believes national sovereignty is absolute, neither country need give any reason to justify such decisions), and 2) those reasons are simply the propaganda you've heard, not necessarily what actually happened.

I mean it looks like the private internal memos regarding the Soviet incident were released in 1992, so this is not propaganda. Or if it were it'd make the USSR look better, not really bad.

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

#204

Post by quietbritishjim »

Another good write up of this incident is on the excellent Admiral Cloudberg blog:

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-shadow-of-war-t...

Another article in that series is also related to a UX mistake: Air France Flight 447.

This crashed, in part, because the inputs from two control sticks (one for pilot and other for copilot) were averaged if they disagreed, unlike on a Boeing (at the time at least) where they're physically connected so you can't have contradictory inputs in the first place, and you'd feel the other pilot fighting you. When the plane stalled, one pilot correctly pushed down to come out of the stall (after which they would be able to pull back up) while the other pulled up instead (which is wrong but does feel like the instinctively correct thing to do). The inputs cancelled out so had almost no effect. By the end both pilots were pulling up, but that hadn't been the case earlier on when the problem could have been resolved.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...

The captain had been on a rest brake and only re-entered the cabin at the last moment. He finally figured out the problem but it was too late to do anything.

> “Go on, pull,” Dubois said. Was this comment a sardonic resignation to fate?

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

#205

Post by thereddaikon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #138
p_l wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identified it as a Boeing 747, but not as a civilian airliner . The same types of planes as civilian airliners are often used as platforms for military and spy planes. FWIW, they would have ended up better off if the original TASS press release was not cancelled just before publication (the one where it was claimed a mistaken shooting due to misidentification).

“It’s a Boeing” could be waved away this way. 747s aren’t used as military or spy planes with the exception of Air Force One and the E-4, neither of which would ever be there unescorted and unannounced.

They also don't have a large an obvious "Korean Air" livery on them. Military aircraft are marked appropriately. I wouldn't necessarily expect a soviet fighter pilot to read english but I would expect him to recognize what a civil airliner looks like. The USSR had their own and also wore colorful liveries.

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

#206

Post by raxxorraxor »

616c wrote: post #175
shenberg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're seriously suggesting that attacking unarmed civilians intentionally, killing parents in front of their children and then kidnapping the children, slaughtering defenseless party-goers, etc. is what I any resistance movement would do, that's ridiculous. If Hamas would only have attacked military targets, there would be no legitimacy to Israel's actions. However, what actually happened was that they attacked p…

Perhaps you should read about what Haganah did to the British before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Or the Arabs that called Jews dogs that should be subjugated 20 years before that? Don't be ridiculous.

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

#207

Post by zaphar »

naasking wrote: post #190
addicted wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s “Russia made no efforts to contact” and “Russia made no efforts to search” both of which indicate it was because Russia was up to no good. Funny how you ignore the reasons the commenter you’re replying to gives to indicate Russia did it because it was evil, reasons which do not apply to the U.S. case, and pretend they never gave those explanations at all.

The point is that 1) those reasons are themselves assuming a particular value system in order to judge evil (for someone who believes national sovereignty is absolute, neither country need give any reason to justify such decisions), and 2) those reasons are simply the propaganda you've heard, not necessarily what actually happened.

You can't judge evil without a backing value system to do so. Not assuming a value system presumes there is no such thing as evil. Which sure, if that's what you want to advocate for then go for it.

But for those of us who do have a value system we'll continue to use it in deciding whether something is evil or not.

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

#208

Post by dang »

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.

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

(I know these things are indeed annoying—but that's why we have this rule.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#209

Post by moritz64 »

A quite recent UX disaster at Paypal.

The Paypal iOS app used to behave strange with numbers. The interface was designed that you had to type in the amount you wanted to send in cents. If you wanted to send USD 50, you had to type 5000. Paypal then would add a comma after the second digit from the right. What made it even stranger: The numbers were aligned right, so it had the feeling of typing backwards. I never really got used to it.

A few weeks ago, without a note, the whole interface changed. Now you HAVE to fill in the comma. If you just type in 5000 like you did before, you would send USD 5000 instead of USD 50. I personally know of one person who send way to much money and I suspect it is because of this UX change.

Thoughtful design matters!

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

#210

Post by ceejayoz »

hoseja wrote: post #120
m463 wrote: post #94

I wonder when a tesla will show up in a courtroom with a situation like this. I'm not talking about autopilot. I'm talking about the continuous (past ridiculous) removal of physical controls from their vehicles. For example, the original model S/X had dedicated controls for lots of functions - turn signals, gear shift, wipers, autopilot, steering wheel tilt, etc. On the steering wheel, there were two buttons and a sc…

What sort of "physical control" would be appropriate for a radar-guided beyond-visual-range anti-air missile?

https://www.amazon.com/STAPLES-Staples-Easy-Button/dp/B001FV...
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