Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

tedium.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#51

Post by kuschku »

sp332 wrote: post #50
kuschku wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is awesome if you have a monitor with 1000 nits or more, as (0,0,0) to (255,255,255) has a blinding contrast on them. The basic issue is that CSS colors are defined in terms of relative brightness of the monitor, and not within of a proper colorspace. Most browsers assume sRGB, but many users don’t even have that. In sRGB, a contrast of (102,102,102) to (255,255,255) is a very pleasant, and perfectly readable c…

So you intentionally have your monitor set uncomfortably bright, but it's everyone else's fault? And the solution is for everyone else to spend money to make your site look better? How about no.

Not "uncomfortably bright". Those brightnesses are required for, for example, photo editing, and are useful when watching movies or gaming.

Changing contrast in hardware down is always a shitty option.

The solution is to handle this in hardware — artifically increase contrast and destroy image quality for people on shitty systems.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#52

Post by andygates »

gpvos wrote: post #36
macintux wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

999 on a rotary dial phone? Dear heavens.

That was, and still is, in the UK. Efficiency is apparently not their strong point.

It's a balance of efficiencies. On the one hand, false "1"'s can be generated by wind, etc, on the line. "111" calls can butt-dialled by sagging trees. With the rotary, "9"'s are nice and distinct.

On the other side of the balance, users perceived "9" as taking aaaaages, partly because they're bloody users and never satisfied, and partly because in emergencies perception of time gets tweaked. Anyway, 999 it was, and remains.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#53

Post by gpvos »

andygates wrote: post #52
gpvos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was, and still is, in the UK. Efficiency is apparently not their strong point.

It's a balance of efficiencies. On the one hand, false "1"'s can be generated by wind, etc, on the line. "111" calls can butt-dialled by sagging trees. With the rotary, "9"'s are nice and distinct. On the other side of the balance, users perceived "9" as taking aaaaages , partly because they're bloody users and never satisfied, and partly because in emergencies perception of time gets tweaked. Anyway, 999 it was, and…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_numbe... gives the, eminently reasonable, reason why this number was chosen:

> The 9-9-9 format was chosen based on the 'button A' and 'button B' design of pre-payment coin-operated public payphones in wide use (first introduced in 1925) which could be easily modified to allow free use of the 9 digit on the rotary dial in addition to the 0 digit (then used to call the operator), without allowing free use of numbers involving other digits; other combinations of free call 9 and 0 were later used for more purposes, including multiples of 9 (to access exchanges before STD came into use) as a fail-safe for attempted emergency calls, e.g. 9 or 99, reaching at least an operator.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#54

Post by bungie4 »

13of40 wrote: post #46
bungie4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I should clarify. Their are many layers of 'responders', their maybe just one, your call was routed to the local police. It may have been routed to call center in that area, who in turn broker the call, etc. Imagine a situation where your traveling down an interstate out in the boonies. Theirs a wreck. You call 911 from your cell. The responder will receive an approximation of your location, likely the clo…

> The responder will receive an approximation of your location, likely the closet cell tower Are you saying the GPS they mandated in cell phones ten years ago, ostensibly just for this purpose, doesn't actually do its job most of the time?

You can't depend on it because people turn them off. Hell, I leave mine off.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#55

Post by mercurysmessage »

tjohns wrote: post #11
mercurysmessage wrote: post #7

I'd like to see one on the roll-out of Japans Earthquake Early Warning System.

Totally agree. I'd really love to see Japan's ETWS system rolled out on the US west coast. I was in Japan earlier this year, and happened to be watching TV when the earthquake warning system cut in. It gave about 5-10 seconds of advance warning before an earthquake hit. Enough time to move out of the way of anything heavy. It's quite impressive. If anyone's curious, this is what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com…

Yes I experienced it a number of times while I've been in Japan as well, it is impressive and certainly helpful. It would be a great system to have in any area that experiences a lot of earthquakes, or other, short notice emergencies.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#56

Post by sp332 »

kuschku wrote: post #51
sp332 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you intentionally have your monitor set uncomfortably bright, but it's everyone else's fault? And the solution is for everyone else to spend money to make your site look better? How about no.

Not "uncomfortably bright". Those brightnesses are required for, for example, photo editing, and are useful when watching movies or gaming. Changing contrast in hardware down is always a shitty option. The solution is to handle this in hardware — artifically increase contrast and destroy image quality for people on shitty systems.

It may be a shitty option but at least you have the option. Unless you want your site to only be legible to photo editors with some money, you need it to have lots of contrast.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#57

Post by 13of40 »

bungie4 wrote: post #54
13of40 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The responder will receive an approximation of your location, likely the closet cell tower Are you saying the GPS they mandated in cell phones ten years ago, ostensibly just for this purpose, doesn't actually do its job most of the time?

You can't depend on it because people turn them off. Hell, I leave mine off.

Sure, you can't depend on it, but I'd expect most people leave it on the default setting.

Re: The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor

#58

Post by kuschku »

sp332 wrote: post #56
kuschku wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "uncomfortably bright". Those brightnesses are required for, for example, photo editing, and are useful when watching movies or gaming. Changing contrast in hardware down is always a shitty option. The solution is to handle this in hardware — artifically increase contrast and destroy image quality for people on shitty systems.

It may be a shitty option but at least you have the option. Unless you want your site to only be legible to photo editors with some money, you need it to have lots of contrast.

> Unless you want your site to only be legible to photo editors with some money, you need it to have lots of contrast.

Or we simply fix browsers.

Because if it’s a choice between blinding users on most mobile devices, and most higher end desktop computers, or blinding those who have cheap hardware, most developers will choose by who is actually willing to pay.

Post reply on HN