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Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#401

Post by rickycook »

ithkuil wrote: post #398
k3a wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are used to say Yes in a standard confirmation dialog. It would be helpful to implement something more complicated like pressing two buttons, typing "yes" to a clear question or solving a simple puzzle (ideally visualizing the outcome while solving it).

A common pattern, e.g. used by github when deleting repos, is to type something (e.g. the name of said github repo); not necessarily a puzzle, just spelling out the thing you want done.

typing “send sms alert” vs testing “do not send sms alert”. that way you’d have muscle memory for the latter, but you’d know what to do if you really wanted to do it

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#402

Post by IncRnd »

IncRnd wrote: post #233
blantonl wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are calling for the person who did this to be instantly fired, but I've always been of the opinion that the guy that pushed that button would be an outstanding hire - because he'll never, ever do something like that again and he's learned an important lesson.

That may be for some cases, but there should be an extreme amount of due care on the part of employees who can hit a button and cause parents to put their children in storm drains. The particular person who did this may not be fired, but their responsibilities will somehow change.

I see my comment was downvoted. Yet, today's news, just a day later, shows that the comment was absolutely correct. The person has been reassigned.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#403

Post by gh02t »

supermdguy wrote: post #266
gh02t wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If possible move upwind, as far away from any military or industrial targets as possible. Otherwise, shelter underground or in a concrete/stone building. Put on the best dust/gas mask you can find. Put on heavy or waterproof clothing and try and cover as much skin as possible. I work in nuclear security so this is kinda my thing. If you're in the fireball zone you're pretty much toast, other than that it's mostly abo…

> I work in nuclear security I'm curious, what does that mean? Designing shelters? Teaching people what to do in nuclear attacks?

Sure. Nuclear security is a broad area and it can mean a whole lot of things, but mostly it means more to do with non-proliferation and defense against and response to nuclear threats on a technical level and less the mechanics of training people what to do in the event of a detonation. It'd usually fall into the spectrum of nuclear engineering, though it can be pretty multi-disciplinary (e.g., my educational background is in nuclear engineering, applied math and CS).

In my case I'm in research; specifically I develop algorithms for locating radioactive sources using sensor networks distributed through a city. My educational background focused heavily on non-proliferation and nuclear forensics. One of the things we studied in my graduate career was how to optimally sample fallout in the immediate aftermath of a detonation based on predicted dispersal in order to get the best quality samples (for forensics work) while minimizing the risk to first responders. Spent a decent chunk of time learning about all the sorts of dangers you expect from a nuclear detonation.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#404

Post by wglb »

Hasz wrote: post #58
f- wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually reasonably well-established - check out this: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/58cc34b9112f7043268... Not common knowledge, though, in part because nuclear hazards have been painted in an exaggerated light by Hollywood (basically, no point in trying to survive, because everybody is going to die and what's going to be left is a 1,000-year lethal nuclear wasteland), and in part because we stopp…

Off topic, but the same guy (Michal Zalewski) has an absolutely amazing guide to his CNC work. http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/gcnc/ For something a bit less depressing.

The same guy being f- above

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#405

Post by gaius »

ithkuil wrote: post #396
gaius wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the remaining employees will see that management takes the issue seriously Why not fire the manager of the person who made the blunder? That would work better on every level.

If that's what always happens, it would be pretty easy to get rid of your manager.

Yep, it should be as easy for you to get rid of your manager as it is for your manager to get rid of you.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#407

Post by jhayward »

anigbrowl wrote: post #263
azernik wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not a planned drill. It was a mistake by an operator during shift change.

I find that explanation hard to take at face value. There's a button specifically labeled 'ballistic missile emergency'? Is there a different button for every possible emergency, like a tsunami button, a hijacked plane button, an earthquake button, a volcano button? The text of the warning was “EMERGENCY ALERT BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” That seems really…

Yes, it is a pre-written message that can be selected from a drop-down list. He was off by one, the "no drill" message was adjacent to the "test" message.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#408

Post by jhayward »

MollyR wrote: post #64

So a test drill went wrong. It makes sense to have drills right now, India (tests with war against China and Pakistan), China (Telling their soldiers to be prepared to die for China), Russia(tests against Nato), and North Korea (getting ready for war with the US) are all having military tests for basically what will quickly become another world war. We are really at a big crossroads as a large amount of people are re…

It wasn't a test drill, it was a system test. Like a heartbeat test. The test message is automatically processed by the downstreams as a test.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#409

Post by loco5niner »

gaius wrote: post #387
roywiggins wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big fat "Are you really sure?" confirmation box would seem to be the absolute minimum requirement here...

A previous employer had an “are you sure?” dialogue on Outlook’s reply-all button, you can script it up in VBA. Didn’t stop people from doing it.

If it that dialog fired every time I clicked reply-all, I would start ignoring that dialog, especially if it was annoying.
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