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Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

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Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#131

Post by ewang1 »

jgrahamc wrote: post #108
ricardobeat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare caches seem to always fail when they are most needed.

I decided to investigate this comment to see if we (CloudFlare) actually had failed while this story was hot. Bottom line is that the site is on CloudFlare, and during heavy load (probably from Hacker News) the site did go down or slowed a lot. Unfortunately, it's the real web server that died or went very slow and not anything in CloudFlare. The server appears to still be having problems because if I browse to other…

Is the site only partially cached in CloudFlare or something? Seems like with your "Always Online" feature, a dead server should trigger CloudFlare's "Always Online" feature and show a cached version for all the pages.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#132

Post by lloeki »

fr0sty wrote: post #104
lloeki wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allowing smoking on planes was and is a terrible idea. The fire risk alone should immediately discount it. Yet, people still smoke around pumps at gas stations and even throw the butt to the ground.

And given that a lit cigarette is not hot enough to ignite gasoline vapor what is the issue? Representative sample: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/27/smoking.film

From the article itself, gasoline ignites at 270°C and cigarettes burn at 700°C+. "we tried a bunch of stuff and it did not do squat" is not quite scientific enough to have me stand in the middle of a gas puddle while a dumbass throws a butt at my feet. I bet you would not take the risk either.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#133

Post by astrodust »

jasonkester wrote: post #67
snowwrestler wrote: post #64

The illustration of the door handle is a great example of piss-poor affordance. A slight ridge is not going to clearly communicate push vs. pull. Especially since our fingers, when gripping, actually like a ridge to fill in the open angle behind the first knuckles. If you want someone to push, give them a big fat flat metal plate or bar to push on. If they can't pull, they are guaranteed to get it right every time. I…

The door handle could actually be described as an anti-affordance. I looked at the photo and thought to myself what a great idea it was that it gave you a comfortable ridge for your knuckles while pulling and a nice rounded bit (instead of a sharp-edged flat surface) to push on. That is, it signalled to me the exact opposite of the designer's intended use. I would have been doubly surprised if pulling on that clearly…

Why not have a handle that's either concave or convex, bowing in or out, to indicate the desired direction? If it's shaped like a hook, you'll pull on it, or more like a dish, push on it.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#134

Post by lloeki »

WalterBright wrote: post #65
phamilton wrote: post #45

This reminds me of a presentation by Twitter at a conference where they discussed MTBR (Mean Time Before Recovery) instead of MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure). Instead of trying to prevent all possible failures, they focused on acceptable failure and speedy recovery. If a server takes twice as long to response to a request, mark it offline and let the automated recovery process diagnose the problem and if it's just an…

Airliners are designed to withstand failure, not to not have any failures. It's a change in perspective, and is very effective. Both the Fukishima plant and the Deep Water Horizon rig were unable to withstand single failures.

> the Fukishima plant ... were unable to withstand single failures.

I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure you can't put the blame of the Fukushima disaster on a single failure.

e.g:

- structure withstood magnitude 9 when designed for at least magnitude 8

- following the shock, rods went down successfully

- power lines being down, generators powering water pumping started successfully

- tsunami drowned oldest generators which were laid too low for a tsunami of that scale, backup batteries took charge

- total amount of destruction around caused delays in grid power restoration so batteries eventually went down

- core could not be cooled so it melted down, and fell to the containment vessel

This is a tiny excerpt sequence of only parts of the events, but it can be seen that there were both multiple successes and multiple failures. Had there been a single failure, it would have stayed quite safe, but the cascade of events led to the disaster we know.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#135

Post by rprasad »

Symmetry wrote: post #125

You can see the same principle in a lot of places. This makes me think of a passage I recently read about the legal system in Germany: …Unlike many developing countries, German legal doctrine and practice avoid this result. German regulatory violations seldom void contracts, and German prosecutors seldom act on regulatory violations revealed in a civil trial. Thus a gardener in the German gray market who does not pay…

That's generally true of most first world countries, including the US and the UK.

Contracts can be broken if they would require an illegal act (i.e., a "crime"), but regulatory infractions generally are not sufficient.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#136

Post by damoncloudflare »

ewang1 wrote: post #131
jgrahamc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to investigate this comment to see if we (CloudFlare) actually had failed while this story was hot. Bottom line is that the site is on CloudFlare, and during heavy load (probably from Hacker News) the site did go down or slowed a lot. Unfortunately, it's the real web server that died or went very slow and not anything in CloudFlare. The server appears to still be having problems because if I browse to other…

Is the site only partially cached in CloudFlare or something? Seems like with your "Always Online" feature, a dead server should trigger CloudFlare's "Always Online" feature and show a cached version for all the pages.

We do not cache the entire site with Always Online. The Always Online feature will display a limited cache of the site's content.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#137

Post by vinodkd »

vacri wrote: post #49
vinodkd wrote: post #44

nice message with the real reason for the ashtrays. one thing that bothered me however, was that push vs pull handle design. if you're really trying to provide affordance, why have a handle at all on a door that needs to be pushed? isnt it our natural tendency to pull on a door handle when provided with one? all we'd need was a "Push" sign and we'd be done. The shape of the handle hinting how to use it seems subtler…

People frequently don't read signs, which is the point of the affordance design (plus caters to folks who can't read the given language). Also, hands make stuff dirty - you do want something there that's easy to clean, though that can just be a metal plate that can't be pulled.

but you could take the sign away and imo people would still open the door - simply because that seems to be the only thing they could do. plus with the whole door surface being available, why would you use just your hands? use your shoulder or even back (if you happen to be carrying stuff in both hands)!

seems to me like that would be more affordance.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#138

Post by tb »

encoderer wrote: post #124
megablast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some airlines make just over $100 per flight. Not per person per flight, PER FLIGHT. They are looking for every saving they can get. You can work this out my looking at an an airlines profits, and how many flights they did a year.

Life is complicated. So are airlines. In this case, airlines are a business designed not to have runaway profit. The unions are very powerful. They know how much money the airline is making a demand large percentages of it. They leave a nominal profit for key investors but shareholders as a whole are regularly left out. In fact, if you look at the entire history of commercial flight, the industry is break-even. That'…

You are referring, of course, to this excellent (and somewhat frightening) article: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#139

Post by justinavery »

jgrahamc wrote: post #108
ricardobeat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare caches seem to always fail when they are most needed.

I decided to investigate this comment to see if we (CloudFlare) actually had failed while this story was hot. Bottom line is that the site is on CloudFlare, and during heavy load (probably from Hacker News) the site did go down or slowed a lot. Unfortunately, it's the real web server that died or went very slow and not anything in CloudFlare. The server appears to still be having problems because if I browse to other…

It worked fine for me until I tried to post a comment, then I saw the caching online/offline issues from cloudflare.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#140

Post by sopooneo »

encoderer wrote: post #124
megablast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some airlines make just over $100 per flight. Not per person per flight, PER FLIGHT. They are looking for every saving they can get. You can work this out my looking at an an airlines profits, and how many flights they did a year.

Life is complicated. So are airlines. In this case, airlines are a business designed not to have runaway profit. The unions are very powerful. They know how much money the airline is making a demand large percentages of it. They leave a nominal profit for key investors but shareholders as a whole are regularly left out. In fact, if you look at the entire history of commercial flight, the industry is break-even. That'…

There was an episode of the podcast Planet Money where they claimed that the American Airline industry has, as a whole, actually lost money over the course of its existence. As in, overall, net financial loss.
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