United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#21

Post by r00fus » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

mnw21cam wrote: post #18

raus22 wrote: post #13

Off-topic: Please use ISO 8601 format(YYYY-MM-DD) for dates in titles. The US date format hurts my poor logical soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Or just use words (8th July 2015). But yes, YYYY-MM-DD actually sorts correctly.

ISO all the way. Words have issues for different month languages (e.g. Auot vs. August), but otherwise is more elegant (no delimiter needed, e.g. 08JUL15)

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#22

Post by sk5t » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

raus22 wrote: post #13

Off-topic: Please use ISO 8601 format(YYYY-MM-DD) for dates in titles. The US date format hurts my poor logical soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#23

Post by aaronkrolik » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

Is anyone familiar with the UA tech stack? I'd be curious to see what they're running.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#24

Post by userbinator » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:25 PM UTC

johnrydell wrote: post #8

Let's just be thankful that we haven't had a major air-based catastrophe due to an outage or hacking!

Planes with pilots in them are mostly autonomous and can avoid each other as well as the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_syste...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Collision_Avoidance_Sy...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collis...

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#25

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:28 PM UTC

lectrick wrote: post #9

I have a nagging (intuition? feeling?) that software safety/reliability/security needs are going to explode soon (because unreliabilities multiply in non-resilient systems interacting with each other) and that these are simply foreshocks. (yeah, I know security is already a huge deal, but as we come to trust software systems more and more, the safety/reliability factor will come more into play) EDIT: This is also par…

Nancy Leveson's been saying that for decades: http://www.amazon.com/Safeware-Computers-Nancy-G-Leveson/dp/...

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#26

Post by imroot » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:28 PM UTC

aaronkrolik wrote: post #23

Is anyone familiar with the UA tech stack? I'd be curious to see what they're running.

They're running SHARES internally; most everything else is specific applications with hooks into shares for data processing and return.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#27

Post by DougWebb » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:29 PM UTC

yAnonymous wrote: post #20

lectrick wrote: post #9

I have a nagging (intuition? feeling?) that software safety/reliability/security needs are going to explode soon (because unreliabilities multiply in non-resilient systems interacting with each other) and that these are simply foreshocks. (yeah, I know security is already a huge deal, but as we come to trust software systems more and more, the safety/reliability factor will come more into play) EDIT: This is also par…

I doubt it. Nobody wants to pay for that.

You might be right, unfortunately. If it's cheaper to buy insurance that will cover the (expected) losses caused by outages, most organizations will choose to do that instead of making the software more failure-resistant. The problem is that insurance only works well for isolated incidents, but a software failure can cause a cascading failure with a huge impact. Insurance companies generally aren't prepared for that and don't have the resources to pay out to everyone.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#28

Post by chinathrow » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #24

johnrydell wrote: post #8

Let's just be thankful that we haven't had a major air-based catastrophe due to an outage or hacking!

Planes with pilots in them are mostly autonomous and can avoid each other as well as the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_syste... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Collision_Avoidance_Sy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collis...

Yes, mostly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#29

Post by JHof » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:31 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #24

johnrydell wrote: post #8

Let's just be thankful that we haven't had a major air-based catastrophe due to an outage or hacking!

Planes with pilots in them are mostly autonomous and can avoid each other as well as the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_syste... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Collision_Avoidance_Sy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collis...

Automated, yes. Autonomous, no. The plane voices an alert, but the pilots still have to react to it.

Re: United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem

#30

Post by jaybna » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 1:34 PM UTC

I knew someone at United that once offered to give me a tour of one of their data centers: "It is like a computer museum - we have one of everything." Hard to imagine that they would have problems as a result. United is a really, really bad airline.