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

The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

octodon.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 695 posts

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#51

Post by givot »

4ggr0 wrote: post #41
givot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, at least Twitter has third-party tools like Thread Reader to mitigate this annoyance. I wonder if there is an equivalent for Mastodon?

You can use this unroller: https://unroller.zachmanson.com/

Thank you, that is just what I was hoping for.

It works very nicely on the linked thread:

- https://unroller.zachmanson.com/threads/https://octodon.soci...

And archives well too:

- https://archive.ph/kFoT9

- https://web.archive.org/web/20231129105248/https://unroller....

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#52

Post by cies »

tpm wrote: post #43
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One only has to see the differences between NATO bombing of serbian power stations vs the russians doing the same with Ukraine, or Israel killing children in gaza vs russian killing children vs the US killing afghan or Iraqi children. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/25/us/crew-of-cruiser-that-d...

NATO bombing of serbian power stations was done in response of Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, after the horrible crimes against humanity perpetrated by serbian forces in Bosnia. "russians doing the same" is a blatant lie. What the russians are doing is a genocide.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is pretty low on civ casualties. Look at Gaza, or the Iraq/Vietnam invasions compare numbers (civ casualties AND time it took) and then draw conclusions on the use of the word genocide.

I also would abstain from using "russians" (or USAers, or Israelis) when referring to actions of the respective govts. Keeps the discussion cleaner of generalizations wrt people that may totally not support their govt's actions.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#53

Post by da_chicken »

locallost wrote: post #29

Everything's possible, but there would be no debate about UI mistakes if it was Iran shooting down a US plane. They would've done because they are evil by nature, or at least perceived as such. In that case the media and the public buys into its own reality, but of course the UI discussion could be a distraction from the public maybe starting to question if that's actually the reality. Also from the Wiki page about t…

You can't really compare how a nation judges being a victim of it's own mistakes directly to how a nation would judge being a victim of its enemy's mistakes. Obviously there's going to be a whole lot more skepticism and distrust.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#54

Post by tlb »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #19
mattszaszko wrote: post #3

I'm so conflicted reading this story. On one hand, yes, there were choices made during the design of the system that directly contributed to this tragedy. And a lot of innocent lives were lost, so saying that's "shit happens, it's an edge case" rings very hollow. On the other hand, this was a very peculiar set of circumstances, very much an edge case. Is it reasonable to expect designers of combat systems to triple c…

Yes - but the implications of reassigning the number immediately to another contact seems something that should have been noticed in the design phase. > Vincennes assigned her the tracking number 4474; Sides assigned her 4131. Aegis unified the contacts under the number 4131. 4474 was then available for re-use, so Aegis assigned it to a US A-6 bomber, which happened to be descending. > But he didn't realize that its…

Global commercial flight traffic averages around 100k flights per day. I don't know what fraction is within the radar range of a big ship in a busy area, but maybe 10k? So it's not trivial to avoid reuse within a day while still having 4-digit numbers. Especially when contacts are assigned numbers independently by multiple ships and then reconciled.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#56

Post by agentgumshoe »

lynx23 wrote: post #39
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mastodon is apparently at least as bad as Meta. Wow. Such a comparison is mindblowing. You are apparently unaware that the default Mastodon web client is only one way of many which you can use to interface with a Mastodon instance. If you feel that there should be a plain HTTP(S) interface to its open API, feel free to advocate for one — or to create it yourself!

Nope, sorry. I am too old and frustrated by modern web accessibility issues that I am not going to waste my time and "contribute" to this mess. A few years back, I would have tried to make the world a better place. These days, I have learnt that we blind people are no longer a factor for anything anymore. I bet LGBTQ people have a way higher chance to get what they want/need then people with disabilities hurt by the…

Not all LGBTQ people mind you, just the latest more minority group within (or appended to).

It gets to the point of absurdity when we expect to add more complexity with new workarounds to make things simple again.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#57

Post by Aissen »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #48
Aissen wrote: post #37

Pro-tip to those unused to mastodon web-ui: you can click the eye on the top right of the center column (next to Back) to expand all posts at once.

How ironic, a post about a user interface disaster needing an explanatory pro-tip for its UI.

Luckily, this one will have less dire consequences.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#58

Post by squirrel23 »

What an insane story. Crazy to think that some of these engineering errors led to such a disastrous outcome...

I do resonate with someone's comments in the above sections reflecting on whether or not such a narrative would be given if it was say, a UI mistake from an enemy country.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#59

Post by cies »

Very impactful mistake, but apparently not a mistake worth apologizing for.

From Wikipedia: "the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran"

Pinnacle arrogance/exceptionalism. Disgusting.

Oh, and the US back then supported Iraq in its horrific attack on Iran.

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

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#60

Post by 4gotunameagain »

Aissen wrote: post #57
4gotunameagain wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ironic, a post about a user interface disaster needing an explanatory pro-tip for its UI.

Luckily, this one will have less dire consequences.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN