161–170 of 175 posts
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23 nanometers off, dang. If they'd only had a slightly wider field of view, they could have found those poor people. :(
Perhaps a little poor taste with the tone, but this is a great point. We're all talking about how poorly we handle units. Nm has two meanings, but I didn't even think about it until this comment.
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The report seems to suggest that his decision to drive where he did was baffling, even with the information he had available. All his officers were telling him to do otherwise, multiple times.
He was looking at different data then they were looking at.
I mean, there seems to be no reasonable reason why that should be the case, he can see (and be notified) of everything they're seeing and he can substantiate his decision by pointing towards the data, and should do so - because in this case the other officers might have noticed problems with that data.
I don't see anyone here commenting on this, but there's an interesting software / UI angle in this story: the captain preferred the fancier, animated-map-style weather reports from a 3rd-party company (B.V.S. reports) to the more terse text-only reports from the National Hurricane Center (sat-C reports). Turns out, the B.V.S reports were using raw data that was 10 to 12 hours old - and they didn't explicitly mention…
The bit you skipped: > He went down to his stateroom after his conversation with Schultz, and when he returned to the bridge he said, “All right, I just sent up the latest weather. Let us clear everything off the chart table with the exception of the charts.” Schultz opened the B.V.S. program. As it happened, according to the N.T.S.B. report, because of a software glitch, the map that appeared was the very same map t…
It's unfortunate when programmers overlook something this big.
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Is this the book where a nuclear technician drops a wrench from high up in a nuclear silo right onto the nuke and hears some horrifying sound (maybe a hissing?). I've been meaning to read that book, someone mentioned it in another HN post. Please let me know thanks.
You might be thinking of "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser.
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23 nanometers off, dang. If they'd only had a slightly wider field of view, they could have found those poor people. :(
Perhaps a little poor taste with the tone, but this is a great point. We're all talking about how poorly we handle units. Nm has two meanings, but I didn't even think about it until this comment.
Similarly, kt means knots as in speed, but the very same kt also means kilotonnes as in dynamite.
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Is this the book where a nuclear technician drops a wrench from high up in a nuclear silo right onto the nuke and hears some horrifying sound (maybe a hissing?). I've been meaning to read that book, someone mentioned it in another HN post. Please let me know thanks.
You might be thinking of "Command and Control" by Eric Schlosser.
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FWIW, this scenario is what many people jump towards in missing-persons cases, and it so far has not been true even once in my experience. It does happen, but it's much rarer than a straightforward combination of bad circumstances and bad decisions. Hell, at this point I've seen more murders and probable murders than people disappearing on purpose.
Likelihood is irrelevant -- what matters is if it was covered. For example, if he bought "How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found" on Amazon, was doing Google Searches for it, etc. -- seems not only worth further investigation. Research shows that if for example during an interview his wife said it was possibly a suicide, that the odds are good it was: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-40199-…
If someone was searching for "How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found", I would assume they meant to hide, not to commit suicide.
I've worked at sea. A mariner would not need to search for that if the intention was suicide.
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It is speculation, but it is also relevant. Commercial shipping may be uniquely prone to accidents caused by profit-driven decisions, as discussed in Perrow's Normal Accidents book. The article probably emphasises the captain's safety consciousnes to prevent people from "blaming the operator", which is an instinctual and often wrong conclusion to jump to. The NTSB report says: Performance. The chief mate's performanc…
In this case the blame is deserved though. The Coast Guard's report places the blame fully on the captain.
The report conclusions mention several events and dozens of contributing factors.
If you want to think in terms of blame, which is not helpful to avoid future accidents nor for nurturing a safety culture, the report "blames" the ship owner, captain, crew, National Hurricane Center and the coast guard...
Some actions of the captain were a contributing factor, notably bridge resource management/communication.
What amazed me reading the report was just how vulnerable the ship was to sinking if it had a list during a storm. While an 18 degree list is extreme it's not unforeseeable in a serious emergency. The problem was this put ventilation openings at a height where they were directly subject to green water infiltration. To make it worse only the intakes were 'watertight' the exhausts were only 'weathertight' meaning that…
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In this case the blame is deserved though. The Coast Guard's report places the blame fully on the captain.
I don't believe it does place the blame fully on the captain, where did you see that? The report conclusions mention several events and dozens of contributing factors. If you want to think in terms of blame, which is not helpful to avoid future accidents nor for nurturing a safety culture, the report "blames" the ship owner, captain, crew, National Hurricane Center and the coast guard... Some actions of the captain w…