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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

#421

Post by immibis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #240
immibis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Something being inevitable is different from it being justified. Hamas’ and Palestinian Jihad’s violence is a predictable response to Israel’s abandonment of two-party talks and its right wing’s ascendency within its politics. That doesn’t justify gunning down kids at a concert. Similarly, the IDF levelling much of Gaza in retribution was a predictable repercussion of killing Israeli civilians, including children. Th…

If your choices make something inevitable, do you have full rights to complain about what you made inevitable happening?

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

#422

Post by KennyBlanken »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #291
quietbritishjim wrote: post #204

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 t…

It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits, since the nature of side sticks makes them impossible to be mechanically linked, unless there was some very complex motor system built into each stick that provided force feedback equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it.

...it's a spring and a servo. Or a brushless motor.

https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob

...or any not-bottom-end-of-market steering wheel for driving video games.

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

#423

Post by psunavy03 »

leetcrew wrote: post #341
withinboredom wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When there's a call it answers/declines, mute/unmute, and ends a call Literally do not care about a phone call when it is raining. Hopefully, it at least has coyote time on it so when you adjust the wiper speed it will ignore a phone call. > Not sure I need a button for steering wheel tilt, should only be when stopped. I've had to adjust while driving. I don't remember for what reason, but I know I've had to do it…

> I also destroyed my transmission by putting it in park at high speed. Worth it. absolutely not worth it. modern cars (ie, anything with abs and disk brakes) achieve maximum deceleration when you mash the brake pedal and allow the car to modulate the clamping force. using the emergency brake and putting the car in park just locks up the wheels. the whole point of abs is to avoid this. you destroyed your transmission…

You don't seem to understand the point of ABS brakes. The way to achieve maximum deceleration in a car IS to lock up the wheels. The reason ABS brakes exist is because when the wheels are locked, the car is sliding as opposed to rolling, which causes the car to skid instead of turn when you turn the steering wheel. Average drivers tend to struggle with this and end up spinning out of control.

So ABS brakes pump the brakes rapidly as a compromise between controllability and stopping distance, which allows the average driver in an emergency to just "stomp and steer" instead of having to learn how to control a skid, which is a more advanced driving skill. But they do this at the expense of stopping distance, which is longer than if you just locked up the brakes.

Putting the transmission in park was still unnecessary and probably useless. It's not designed for that force, so it didn't absorb any energy or help the car stop faster; it just blew up.

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

#424

Post by mrpippy »

don-code wrote: post #384
oldgradstudent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A German professor of mine worked at BMW before grad school. He worked on the firmware of the tachometer. The behavior of the tachometer needle was dictated by the marketing department. A BMW engine accelerates smoothly and confidently. The tachometer needle never shakes, it rises smoothly and confidently.

This is wholly unsurprising to me - the tachometer on my BMW is audibly out of sync with the engine.

Is that the actual sound of the engine, or fake engine noise being generated through the speakers?

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

#425

Post by immibis »

cesarb wrote: post #293
quietbritishjim wrote: post #204

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 t…

> 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 I don't know if it's true, but I recall reading somewhere that this physical connection is a breakable link, so if one of the controls gets stuck the other control can still be used to fly the airplane (after some application of strong force to break the connection).

It also caused one accident, where both pilots thought the controls were jammed because the other pilot was pulling in the opposite direction. This is no better than averaging. At least Airbus gives an alarm.

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

#426

Post by smolder »

thereddaikon wrote: post #317
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these changes just introduce needless risk of complex failure for no real gain Analog speedometers are more complex and can’t be patched OTA. Eliminating them from the fleet means one less part to procure and inventory for manufacturing and service. Given the downside is losing precise speed awareness (you should still be able to judge rough speed visually—that’s the back-up), this seems like a fair trade-off. Cont…

Why do cars need to be patched OTA? Why isn't the code for something as mission critical as a car not written right before it was shipped? I never needed an ECU update on a car before? And my infotainment rarely needed one to the point where the handful of times it did get a firmware update it was handled during servicing just fine.

They don't need to be patched OTA. It's ridiculous. The terrible product design practices from other parts of life have unfortunately seeped into automaking.

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

#427

Post by rbanffy »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #291
quietbritishjim wrote: post #204

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 t…

It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits, since the nature of side sticks makes them impossible to be mechanically linked, unless there was some very complex motor system built into each stick that provided force feedback equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it.

> It's not something that can be changed on airbus cockpits

You'd need to run cables between them and redesign the sticks to have mechanical hooks, and it'd be a very ugly hack, but it's hardly impossible.

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

#428

Post by pesfandiar »

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…

Software engineers sometimes wonder about the importance of their jobs by comparing them to other engineering fields where mistakes can hurt or kill fellow human beings. And then there are jobs that hurt or kill regardless of the quality of your work.

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

#429

Post by immibis »

InsomniacL wrote: post #333
ryanjshaw wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shifter? nope - it guesses what direction you want to go. I honestly thought you were making this up, or at the very least exaggerating. I can't believe it's true. It just makes no sense.

Tesla have a habit of doing things that make no sense and making a success out of it regardless.

Capitalism has a habit of doing things that make no sense and making a success out of it regardless.

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

#430

Post by immibis »

eadmund wrote: post #411
mavhc wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left scroll wheel can: play/pause/next/previous/vol up/down in Normal mode If you press the wiper button on the steering wheel it can change wiper speed Long press is a custom function When there's a call it answers/declines, mute/unmute, and ends a call The right one actives autosteer/tacc/fsd, adjusts follow distance and max speed There's 3 buttons for left/right/high beam on the left, and on the right, buttons…

My God, they’ve finally made Marcus J. Ranum’s comment reality: ‘If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles — but you’d be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.’

they even call it X!
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