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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

#451

Post by subroutine »

astrobase_go wrote: post #177
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…

I think your company is PSE, correct?

Indeed it is!

I'm fine with our name being mentioned. I didn't include it above because our website is trash, which doesn't bode well for a company with professional graphics designers and human factors engineers on staff haha.

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

#452

Post by immibis »

vdqtp3 wrote: post #406
mardifoufs wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because to me, there's so much more leniency towards Israel. Blockading an entire city for almost two decades, and controlling almost every external aspect of its life while also openly and proudly colonizing the west bank with 0 repercussions is something only Israel can get away with. Bombing a city into rubbles with 0 official international condemnation from the west is also a thing only Israel can do…

> Bombing a city into rubbles with 0 official international condemnation from the west is also a thing only Israel can do. There's plenty to criticize Israel for, but this isn't one of them. If Tijuana started sending terrorists over the border to San Diego, Mexico elected members of a known terrorist organization to public office and started a campaign to kick the US out of California "from the colorado to the sea?"…

[flagged]

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

#453

Post by masklinn »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #431
masklinn wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 does not have to be “equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it” since there is normally no significant load applied by the stick to the hand (only the centering springs). So most every feedback should be noticeable. And force feedback is being deployed right now…

Yes, but then no one would consider the feedback to be the equivalent of a mechanically linked system, like what Boeing uses.

Of course they would: the problem is that there is a lack of feedback when incompatible input is entered.

Audio feedback was added since AF 447 but as well known sound is one of the first thing to be blanked out in high stress situations. Physical feedback provides a second stimulus, and one which does not get ignored as much.

The planes are FBW, the side sticks have no mechanical linkage outside their control box, there is no cause for a pilot to input significant force on the stick, and thus most every feedback would be sensible. Unlike a 737, the pilots are not physically moving the control surfaces.

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

#454

Post by immibis »

grumple wrote: post #179
Ma8ee wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing from your narrative is the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli settlers. The settlers are harassing and seizing land from Palestinians. Those settlers are protected by the Israeli Defense Forces. All of this is well documented and are repeatedly criticised by many well reputable human rights organisations. So, no, it's not restrain that is rewarded by these savage attacks. And while I condemn the ter…

[flagged]

Well that appears to demonstrate that Hamas works and prevents even greater harm than the harm carried out by Hamas. Probably not a message Israel wants to send.

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

#455

Post by SamBam »

eadmund wrote: post #407
davidmurdoch wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a "comma" to refer to the decimal separator when talking about USD while writing in English about software (written in a computer language that uses a decimal point) took me on a mental rollercoaster. So much so that it led me to read the Wikipedia page on the decimal separator. My favorite part: > Unicode defines a decimal separator key symbol (⎖ in hex U+2396, decimal 9110) which looks similar to the apostrop…

>> Unicode defines a decimal separator key symbol (⎖ in hex U+2396, decimal 9110) which looks similar to the apostrophe. This symbol is from ISO/IEC 9995 and is intended for use on a keyboard to indicate a key that performs decimal separation. Egad, settling the ./, issue by selecting ⎖ is like settling the debate between 0-based arrays and 1-based by numbering them from ½. Or between little- and big-endian by choosi…

Huh, I don't see it that way. It's totally unambiguous, there would be no way for that character to have entered the number without it being the decimal separator.

Contrast that to choosing either a period or a comma and your setting yourself up for serious potential errors.

Obviously the user doesn't need to see that symbol, you can localize it however you want.

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

#456

Post by rootusrootus »

psunavy03 wrote: post #423
leetcrew wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

> The way to achieve maximum deceleration in a car IS to lock up the wheels

That isn't true. Dynamic friction for a tire is always less than static friction, as soon as the tires are sliding your stopping distance is going to get longer. A good driver used to be able to threshold brake better than a basic ABS setup, but that hasn't been true now for years. Modern ABS computers are quite advanced.

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

#457

Post by subroutine »

pesfandiar wrote: post #428
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.

I'm not sure what you are implying. The nature of the work described above was to prevent a disaster like the shooting down of commercial Flight 655 from ever happening again.

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

#458

Post by masklinn »

rbanffy wrote: post #444
MichaelZuo wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible for it to still be viable for a commercial airliner competing on costs, especially long term upkeep costs. Not impossible for an unlimited budget.

I think the biggest no-nos on this hack would be that it'd need to be certified and since it fundamentally changes the UI for the pilots, everyone would need to be retrained. The hack itself would be a small detail line on the overall budget for the changes.

The retraining would barely be a concern. It would be a new input similar (but not identical) to the stick shaker, or a new audio alert (as was literally introduced for the dual-input issue after AF447).

The hack is the entirety of the cost, it would require completely redesigning the side-stick, updating their entire maintenance procedure (currently side-stick can trivially be unscrewed and swapped out), as well as redesigning the cabin cell to provide routing for the cables such that they keep tension and don't get damaged.

Stick manufacturers have been working on active sticks for more than two decades, and they're getting released right now. While force feedback on PC joysticks was introduced in 1997.

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

#459

Post by rootusrootus »

bdavbdav wrote: post #264
ImaCake wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The analog speedometer it replaced has been digital behind the scenes for ages. The cluster is just sat on a CAN (or similar) bus and controlling a servo for the analog gauge. The pure digital speedometer is significantly less failure prone (and indeed when it does fail, it’s obvious).

> The pure digital speedometer is significantly less failure prone

It sure is. I'm old enough to have had several cars with speedometer malfunctions due to that stupid little plastic gear at the transmission. One more nuisance I'm glad we don't have on newer cars.

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

#460

Post by rootusrootus »

georgehotelling wrote: post #373
rglullis wrote: post #30

Aside: it is the second day in a row that a thread from Mastodon ends up on the frontpage of HN. When was the last time I Twitter thread did the same, and does anyone else doubts that Twitter is no longer at the center of tech-related conversation?

One difference is that Twitter no longer shows threads to logged-out users, while Mastodon does. If someone posted the same thread to both sites, the Mastodon one would be better to link to.

I think this is a misfeature that will hurt Twitter going forward. I don't bother clicking a link to a Twitter thread any more because I know I'm just going to get prompted to log into the account I don't have. And I don't care enough to use an alternate tool, so I just move on. I expect I'm not alone.
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