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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

#241

Post by ben0x539 »

cies wrote: post #228
ben0x539 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having become an expert on the incident from having skimmed half of the wikipedia article, I note that it mentions both Reagan considering his letter an apology and the US government not having made a formal apology, so I imagine there is some clever political distinction between the two.

There also has been no apology for US' use of agent orange in Vietnam, nor has there been a payment of compensation. Why not formally apologize for such a fuck up (Iran aircraft), except for arrogance/exceptionalism?

I guess because they think it doesn't benefit them and will make future diplomacy harder? I don't know if that falls under arrogance, but I also don't know how to ascribe comprehensible motivations to the state department or whoever is in charge of that.

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

#242

Post by cies »

agmater wrote: post #75
cies wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is pretty low on civ casualties. Look at Gaza, or the Iraq/Vietnam invasions compare numbers (civ casualties AND time it took) and then draw conclusions on the use of the word genocide. I also would abstain from using "russians" (or USAers, or Israelis) when referring to actions of the respective govts. Keeps the discussion cleaner of generalizations wrt people that may totally not suppor…

Genocide != Civilian casualties. Genocide is about the extermination of a people. Anders Puck Nielsen just made a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9n77DPJ7AE

> Genocide is about the extermination of a people.

Thus resulting a lot of civ casualties. If it's genocide is for ever up to debate. Civ casualties are usually not that debatable. Without a large number (%) of civ deaths in some place there cannot be a genocide.

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

#243

Post by FinnKuhn »

immibis wrote: post #194
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #147

Not reading your 20-post twitter vomit - just make a blog post dude.

In other good news, Mastodon is now so good a Twitter clone that you think it's Twitter.

until you try and follow or like the post and learn that the instance this was posted on has blocked your instance...

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

#244

Post by Tangurena2 »

dontlaugh wrote: post #49
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…

Also, what was the US navy even doing there? The Persian Gulf is nowhere near the US. It's as if Iran had their navy parked on the US east coast, it would be seen as an outrage immediately.

25% of the world's crude oil was shipped out of the Gulf at that time. The Iran-Iraq war had caused the prices of crude to skyrocket as many insurance companies refused to cover any shipping in the region. So the US felt compelled to protect the exports of crude oil from "friendly" nations. While continuing to blockade Iranian imports/exports.

For more details on the political situation at that time, I recommend reading The Persian Puzzle by Pollack.

https://www.amazon.com/Persian-Puzzle-Conflict-Between-Ameri...

Additionally, to help explain how messed up the shoot-down was, Sources of Power by Klein.

https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Power-20th-Anniversary-Decisi...

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

#245

Post by ajsnigrutin »

moritz64 wrote: post #209

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 rea…

The price in cents is the way "it was always done" in retail, back when POS terminals were not directly connected to cash registers and the worker had to manually type in the amount. But yeah, sudden change in US design will causemany errors everywhere.

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

#246

Post by networkchad »

ksjskskskkk wrote: post #102
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…

I'm more worried when spacex "pivots" to iron dome like products. you will get a barrage of missiles raining down from space on top of some kindergartens because the autofire ai correlated a bunch of Toyota suvs moving to the same point with terrorists

[dead]

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

#247

Post by aqfamnzc »

ImaCake wrote: post #108
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…

Its not just Tesla. Recent Jeep models have a digital speedometer with no analog backup. From an engineering perspective these changes just introduce needless risk of complex failure for no real gain. Surely the speedometer is not the make or break cost item on a car?

Digital dashes have been a thing for a long, long time. They're objectively better in some ways (imho) and costs add up!

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

#248

Post by _giorgio_ »

moritz64 wrote: post #209

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 rea…

Always felt wrong. Now it's even more wrong.

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

#249

Post by MobileVet »

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…

This is on point.

I purposely didn’t buy a Tesla because I wanted to drive a car, not a toy.

Are touch interfaces all bad? No, but in situations where heavy focus is required and the inputs are dynamically changing, they are a disaster.

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

#250

Post by jayp1418 »

subroutine wrote: post #160

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 d…

This is how every software UI should be designed as well.
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