10 ms·

When Interfaces Kill: What Happened to John Denver (1999)

200 points by leejoramo 4y ago

mothsonasloth 4y ago
Slightly related - https://youtu.be/IQ_6-4MF79U?t=36 https://youtu.be/IQ_6-4MF79U?t=36
- rexsteroxxy 4y ago
  Haha nice find
lordleft 4y ago
I love John Denver's music and I am still haunted by his death, 24 years later. I had no idea his death was likely the result of poor user ergonomics. Engineering can kill.
pmarreck 4y ago
I would recommend not reading the coroner's report on how he died. (Chalking this one up to one of my late-night insomniac excursions down a rabbit hole.) At least it was quick. It was absolutely not pretty, though. He was (is? somewhere? maybe?) an amazing dude who pushed hard to get his music accepted
jmclnx 4y ago
Interesting read, I remember the crash but never heard what happened. Quote of the day from the article about the early days of Autos: >Car fires are a common enough occurrence along America's freeways. A gas line breaks under the hood and soon the engine is engulfed in flames. The cure? Pull over, get out, find a long stick, and start roasting marshmallows.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  When I read that my first thought was "I bet most car fires are electrical or exhaust related, not from a random gas line leak."
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    The first "new" car I ever bought had a rubber gas line under the hood that was never properly clipped into place. It rubbed against the edge of the clip until eventually it cut through the line causing a leak. Fortunately I smelled the gasoline before it caught fire. I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons.
    - peteradio 4y ago
      Fortunately gasoline will generally evaporate in moderate heat rather than ignite! Unless there is another ignition source which might be common enough on a poorly maintained vehicle. I've driven cross-country with a leaky fuel rail, would not recommend!
    - sonofhans 4y ago
      > I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons. Yes, exactly, right there with you. A good car will still be good after 10 years of use. Any car that isn’t worth buying at that point isn’t worth buying to begin with.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I assume all fires in EVs are electrical. I doubt there are very many true electrical fires in ICE vehicles. Even if there is an arc, you need some kind of fuel to get a real fire going. Sometimes that might be the rubber/plastic components. But I feel like it's more likely to just be the ignition source for a fuel leak.
    - peteradio 4y ago
      Plastic burns pretty well, my 1991 F150 had a fire under the hood that was entirely electrical.
      - giantg2 4y ago
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  This is why I carry a fire extinguisher in my car
  - knodi123 4y ago
    Right next to the marshmallows.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I used to do this. I redid my fuel lines and needed the correct type of extinguisher in case something happened during that. Then I just kept it in the car for years.
  - oxfeed65261 4y ago
    I actually used the fire extinguisher I used to carry in my ‘79 Buick LeSabre to put out a fire but I ended up regretting it. Smoke started pouring out from under the hood, so I pulled over and popped the hood and saw a blazing fire. I ran in a panic to the trunk, got the extinguisher, and put out the fire. It turned out that the air conditioner compressor had seized up and stopped turning, causing the belt to overheat and catch fire. The fix was simple: remove the remains of the belt and everything was fine. Roll down the windows when it’s hot. If I had let the car burn out and be totaled I would have saved a lot of trouble, including endless transmission leaks and a busted U-joint which led to my coasting to the side of the road with the driveshaft (connected only at the front) dragging and bouncing and throwing up showers of sparks down the freeway.
    - NegativeLatency 4y ago
      Had a similar thought, if the car is empty it's a different consideration to when it's loaded up with my camping gear or other possessions.
      - oxfeed65261 4y ago
        Yeah. I started carrying the fire extinguisher because my parents’ full-size Chevy van burned up with all of their camping supplies, clothes, guns, etc. from a three-month roadtrip. Also melted the front of their trailer before the highway patrol arrived. Brave/insane CHP officer pulled the propane tanks off of the trailer before they blew. I had nothing of value in the Buick. Ironic, as Ms. Morissette would say. My parents bought the Buick from my grandmother to drive home to Virginia after the van fire, and they gave it to me for my senior year of college. My fire was a couple of years after graduation.
geocrasher 4y ago
There's such a thing as over-optimization. So many people cannot see past their own justifications. Had the original builder of the aircraft stuck to the plans instead of trying to be clever, a life would have been saved.
karaterobot 4y ago
> ...the flaws that led to Denver's death were the work of the builder, and had nothing to do with Burt Rutan [the original designer]. These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to improve on Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to have been accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if it did kill the pilot. > We in the PC and web worlds have a lot to learn from this, too. We have a lot of bad design floating around that is just as perverse as fuel valves that face the wrong way, hidden behind firewalls... I agree that we have a lot of bad design in the PC and Web worlds, but I don't think that's the conclusion I'd draw at the end of the article. It seems like this a lesson about an engineer changing the design during implementation without understanding (or while misunderstanding) the original design. Chesterton's fuel valve.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  I would say that engineer may have a perfectly valid reason to do it, and it may be even a better overall decision, as was indeed in this case, preventing fuel pipes in the cockpit as I understood from the article. What is often lacking is testing of significant changes before giving final result to the user. And that, together with writing documentation and training is often deemed uninteresting and boring by engineer rich teams. "Community will fill up gaps" is often heard. Well maybe. And maybe community will write an accident analysis after something bad has happened.
  - cduzz 4y ago
    This highlights the importance of SOPs, training, checklists etc. What's the value of a unit-less fuel gauge? Why not a warning light or two per tank and / or a calibrated fuel gauge? If you want to move the fuel hoses out of the cabin (good plan!) move the fuel hoses out of the cabin but leave the interface in place and make it electrical; put the mechanical switch in the difficult to find place and update the SOP to include "if the remote fuel switch fails use the mechanical switch in this difficult to reach location" Engineering around edge cases is hard. Which is just simply saying "engineering is hard". Doing things without addressing edge cases is just craft.
SoftTalker 4y ago
> He had fuel gauges in the rear of the aircraft, behind the pilot, and a mirror (!) used to look at them. Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a similar setup with the magnetic compass. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-the-md-80-magnetic-compass-behind-the-first-officers-seat https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th...
- tivert 4y ago
  > Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a similar setup with the magnetic compass. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-the-md-80-magnetic-compass-behind-the-first-officers-seat https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th... The Youtube video linked from that question that actually shows the compass setup "isn't available anymore," but I found it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140323065924/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_oyBC5RIj8 https://web.archive.org/web/20140323065924/http://www.youtub...
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> If you approach software design the way experts in commercial and military cockpit human factors approach their craft, you will end up with designs that are fast, familiar, and forgiving. Such designs would be a refreshing change in the ghastly world of PC software. They'd be a refreshing change in the world of general aviation, too. This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of required flight hours. If I required my users to train for hundreds of hours before using my software by themselves, I would make all sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a command line or text UI interface might actually be the most productive. However, that is not the case. Commercial and military cockpit design are all designed for the efficiency of the expert (especially military cockpits, since you do not want a “Are you sure” confirmation dialog during a dogfight).
- tivert 4y ago
  >> If you approach software design the way experts in commercial and military cockpit human factors approach their craft, you will end up with designs that are fast, familiar, and forgiving. Such designs would be a refreshing change in the ghastly world of PC software. They'd be a refreshing change in the world of general aviation, too. > This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of required flight hours. If I required my users to train for hundreds of hours before using my software by themselves, I would make all sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a command line or text UI interface might actually be the most productive. However, that is not the case. Not necessarily. Your objection seems to be relevant to the "fast" part, but there's a lot of software that (for instance) just ignores familiar established patterns because the designer wanted to be different. It almost all cases, it would be a great improvement if they just stopped doing that.
pcurve 4y ago
John Denver was an experienced pilot who owned multiple planes with 2,700 flight hours. Unfortunately, on this particular experimental plane with an odd setup, just an hour or two.
tomohawk 4y ago
We got a new car. It comes with a touch screen instead of physical controls. We really wanted to avoid the screen, but ended up settling on the least offensive / most likely usable for us car vehicle. There was nothing out there in new car land that we liked. It is no longer safe doing simple things such as turning on/off recirculation. We like fresher air, so generally want recirculation off. However, it is not uncommon to see a truck in front of us suddenly belch a lot of smoke. In the old car, this was no problem. Push the recirc button and keep the bad stuff from getting into the car. In the new car, that would require hitting the correct button near the bottom of the screen to cause it to bring up the environmental controls, and then hitting the right button near the now top of the screen to toggle the recirc. Totally unsafe when in traffic. Add to that the settings that don't stay set every time you turn off the car, requiring manually going through and setting things up - it's not only unsafe but horrible.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  ... and yet, you still bought the car. I think I see the problem.
- boredumb 4y ago
  It's amazing how car manufacturers have captured the frustration of navigating through your locked mobile device to do something arbitrary while driving and embedded that experience directly into the dashboard.
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    We have laws against using phones while driving for very good reasons everyone understands. And then car manufacturers decide to make turning Air Condition on and off into a experience as much distracting as using a smartphones, so they can save a couple hundred dollars in a 30.000 dollars vehicle. And because accidents caused by stupid car UIs are not as obvious an newsworthy as texting and driving, no politician has decided out that pushing for legislation for tactile controls can give him votes, so, nothing is done, legislation-wise, to curb this practice.
pkamb 4y ago
> The valve: The builder not only placed the valve in a non-standard location [behind the pilot's left shoulder], he also rotated it in such a way that turning the valve to the right turned on the left fuel tank. This ensured that a pilot unfamiliar with the aircraft, upon hearing the engine begin missing and spotting in his mirror that the left fuel tank was empty, would attempt to rotate the fuel valve to the right, away from the full tank, guaranteeing his destruction. So the builder intended you turn the backwards valve right, towards the left wing, and that activates the left fuel tank? This certainly sounds like a better human interface than turning the backwards valve left, towards the right wing, and activating the left tank.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Good point. I guess it's the pilot muscle memory with counter clockwise being left and clockwise being right that screws this concept up. If the valve is in front of the pilot both methods match, if it's behind they are opposite. I could imagine this issue only becoming apparent in such a situation. I think this aircraft should really have had a both setting though. Normally the fuel selector is only needed in case of leaks or unbalance.
tivert 4y ago
> And, indeed, the NTSB, as per its long history of setting aside findings, human factors or otherwise, that might conflict with a verdict of pilot error, ruled that the responsibility for this crash lay with the pilot.
- gffrd 4y ago
  Edward Tufte would like a word …
retrocryptid 4y ago
"These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to improve on Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to have been accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if it did kill the pilot." Tog does not mince words.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  It does look like this was a common change though considering there were 2 similar accidents before. Perhaps a community forum where this modification was proposed?
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    IIUC the two similar incidents were in the exact same plane (but did not cause a crash) not in a plane with a similar modification. [edit] > According to other pilots who were familiar with the airplane and/or had flown it, to change the fuel selector a pilot had to: 1) Remove his hand from the right side control stick if he was hand flying the aircraft; 2) Release the shoulder harness; 3) Turn his upper body 90 degrees to the left to reach the handle; and 4) Turn the handle to another position. Two pilots shared their experiences of having inadvertently run a fuel tank dry with nearly catastrophic consequences because of the selector and sight gauge locations[1]. Note "familiarity with the airplane" not "a similar Long EZ" which they use later to talk about investigators inadvertently depressing the rudder pedal when trying to use the valve. 1: https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/ https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver...
robinsonb5 4y ago
Interesting article - but I find it odd that something published on a site devoted to interaction design should have such small text - and full-width at that. Currently using Firefox on Windows - I don't often have to touch the zoom setting, but for this one I had to crank it to 150% to read the article comfortably.
- mhandley 4y ago
  Probably looked fine on an 800x600 screen when the article was written.
- asdfman123 4y ago
  While looking at the site, I dropped my phone on my toe, bruising it severely. Now I have to go to the hospital, all thanks to bad design.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    Five Whys! Why did you go to the hospital? "Because I severely bruised my toe." Why? "Because I dropped my phone on it." Why? "Because I was trying to hold it with 3 fingers, while using my thumb and forefinger to attempt a zoom pinch thing." Why? "Because the text on this ergonomics article was too hard to read." Why? "Because the web in 1999 was a very different place." Verdict: Your fault for trying to read a computer website on a telephone. :)
    - asdfman123 4y ago
      This is victim blaming
- dang 4y ago
  "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Imagine if one were building a one-off vehicle and it had a critical control placed in an ergonomic spot with flammable fluid or maybe hot or high pressure lines routed through the cabin to necessarily reach it. What would the response be if they posted it to HN, Reddit, Youtube? They would get harassed endlessly about how dangerous that it. You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should "never" run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc. All sorts of low effort comments would be made to score cheap virtue points dunking on the builder. It would be one giant safety circle jerk complete with clipboards and safety vests. And that kind of "I know the best practices but I don't deeply understand the requirements of this specific implementation" kills people, like apparently John Denver. This really should be sobering to many here. You could have been that builder. But what will we take away from it? Not the hard uncomfortable lesson to keep your mouth shut and don't touch anything in the name of "best practices" until you truly know the ins and outs of the application. Heavens no. We'll just make out our UIs suck a little less and call it good. That's much easier.
- Arrath 4y ago
  > You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should "never" run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc. Hah, I wish. I've run older construction equipment where all the control levers worked by actuating valves directly on the various hydraulic lines, with easily a couple dozen in- and out-let hoses routed through the cabin and through the control panel, each one full of high pressure, high temperature hydraulic fluid. The worst was in the machines with inoperative A/C in the summer, those hoses might as well have been big radiator fins in the cabin.
arprocter 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ is the aircraft in question
- mcguire 4y ago
  The NTSB Report https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/28002/pdf https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...
greedo 4y ago
If you read the crash report, it's pretty clear that Denver was both aware of this design flaw and failed to adequately fill the tanks. https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/ https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver...
- w10-1 4y ago
  John Denver failed to fill his gas tank -- twice. Multiple Long-EZ's that failed over water ditched without injury. About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running out of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to do neither: fill your tank, and turn around. As for design changes, builders have tried hundreds of modifications to the Long-EZ design, and many of the successful ones are now the standard of care. Indeed, unlike software generally, there is usually a strong and clear standard of care for each experimental plane model, as voiced by the builders with the most cogent explanations coupled with their own flying safety record (benevolent dictators eating their own dog food). The experimental aircraft community differs precisely in that everyone who flies their own plane is not the chicken but the pig (and builders who talk a great game are ignored).
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    > About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running out of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to do neither: fill your tank, and turn around. Denver was told by a technician that the tanks had "less than half in the right tank and less than a quarter in the left tank" These are each 26 gallon tanks. The technician was wrong because the gauges were non-linear (and had no markings). Denver should have checked himself (and hopefully knew the gauges were non-linear), but either didn't check or didn't know. 10+ gallons (what he likely thought he had in the right tank) is more than enough for the flight he was attempting.
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
[flagged]
wkat4242 4y ago
So... 114 of these crashed according to Wikipedia. That's quite a lot for an experimental type. It doesn't say how many were built but it's pretty severe. I agree in this case it was a nonstandard modification that caused it but still this does not seem to be the safest type to fly. One thing I also read was that the valve was very hard to turn in this case. Which is probably something that he shouldn't have taken off with in that state. Especially because this was not even a thing that came out of the blue, it was noticed during precheck and the owner even said he never turned it during flight because it was so difficult. Meaning in my opinion that it's wholly unsuitable as a control with critical importance to the flight process. Especially for an aircraft without a "both" setting. It looks super cool though, I'll see if it exists for flight simulator. PS the jail number was N555JD, sounds a bit like a movie.
- hn8305823 4y ago
  Most Experimental class crashes are on the first flight. https://www.flyingmag.com/blogs-fly-wire-ntsb-safety-study-targets-experimental-aircraft/ https://www.flyingmag.com/blogs-fly-wire-ntsb-safety-study-t... > One of the eye-opening stats was that most accidents involving EAB aircraft happen very early in the airplane’s life, often on the very first flight, and early into that flight. Pilots who survived EAB crashes often said the engine quit or lost power, or that pitch control on takeoff or climbout was not what they anticipated. Experimental aircraft crashes also account for 25% of GA crashes: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/general-aviation-safety https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/general-aviation-safety In the US 51% or more of the construction must be done by the original owner/pilot and they must also complete the first flight and subsequent test flights themselves. These test flights must follow a plan submitted by the pilot and approved by the FAA, but that is a fairly routine/templated process when building from a known kit. If your build deviates from the standard kit you can expect the FAA to require a longer/more rigorous test flight plan. The test plan is usually focused on verifying the engine and flight controls operate as expected and documenting the stall speed/characteristics for that specific airframe.
- edrxty 4y ago
  That's around 1 in 8 registered airframes. The derived designs were even worse, 6 of 31 berkuts have crashed. Ultimately a big factor is they aren't usually built as kit planes but rather full scratch builds. Each builder is independently sourcing materials and composites are very unforgiving. Kit planes are generally not that bad as the number of ways you can fail in construction is relatively well bounded and there's a lot of feedback into the design side to mitigate these common errors. I'm working on an RV8 and the errata is really something to behold. It's an older 90s design but the factory is still changing parts out on me occasionally as they discover issues. This is much more in line with how certified aircraft work so it stands to reason that they would enjoy a better safety record.
hn8305823 4y ago
> Just as with Unix, just as with DOS, the more confounding everything is, the better it is Unix == confounding? I'm sorry but even as a complete n00b and needing to buy "Unix in a Nutshell" in the early 1990's, Unix refreshingly made complete sense compared to DOS+QEMM+win3.1+IRQ's+spend all your time tuning and trying to get things to maybe work. It was like night and day. Yes there were things to learn (hence the book) but it was easy and just worked. Edit: referring to SunOS/Solaris on Sun hardware in the early 1990's vs DOS
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  Yes, few would dispute the idea that in 1999 UNIX was a paragon of usability engineering.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
SilasX 4y ago
Since no one's mentioned it, another interesting incidence of this was when Anton Yelchin (who played Chekov in the newer Star Trek movies) died from mistakenly putting his Jeep into neutral when he thought he put it in park. Chrysler was using a new (and overclever) shifter design where you couldn't easily confirm by look or feel what gear it was in, and so was prone to being misidentified. Yelchin death reporting https://filmindustry.network/star-trek-actor-anton-yelchin-dies-fatal-accident/31377 https://filmindustry.network/star-trek-actor-anton-yelchin-d... Consumer Reports article about the issues behind the recall: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fca-recalls-confusing-shifters-in-chrysler-dodge-jeep/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fca-recalls-confu...
- buildsjets 4y ago
  I rented one of these Jeeps a few months before Anton Yelchin's death, and my first reaction that was that it was an accident waiting to happen, that I expected to see a rash of senior citizens driving though storefronts because of it, and that I would avoid parking near them in the future. One of the biggest issues is that not only does the gearshift lever not move to indicate the selected gear, but that the gearshift lever has multiple modes of operation - a short press would select reverse, but a long press would select drive.
ubermonkey 4y ago
It's super weird to me that the article just presents as an article of faith that the NTSB inappropriately blames pilots.
- mcguire 4y ago
  There are a couple of reasons for this. First, unless the aircraft just suddenly fell apart, the pilot is always involved somehow. For example, in this case, the direct cause of the crash was the pilot providing a hard right (?) rudder input. Second, and more cynically, the representation of pilots in the investigation is the weakest (and identifying the pilots as at fault causes the least economic consequences on everybody). For example, if you look back to when Airbus introduced the fly-by-wire system with moded inputs, their planes were dropping like bricks. (Including by the plane's test pilot at the Paris air show.) However, most (all?) of those incidents were assigned to pilot error in spite of the fact that an airplane that would change its flight characteristics or even conflict with pilot actions was a fun new thing.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    The airshow one looks very much like pilot error... not a great example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q You have an experienced pilot who knew the plane and its safety systems disable alpha floor protection before completely botching the approach. He could have aborted and gone around to get set up properly. But he didn't. Instead he dropped to 30 feet on idle engine thrust, in a high drag configuration, and didn't press the TOGA button until 4 seconds before the crash. That's not enough time for the engine to spool up from idle. I don't support prosecuting pilots except in the most egregious cases and I think involuntary manslaughter was the right call here. Edit: The pilot claimed to have done this maneuver 20 times prior to the crash.
- Zak 4y ago
  It is weird, particularly when the NTSB report lists the following factors before the pilot's errors: Occurrence #1: LOSS OF ENGINE POWER(TOTAL) - NONMECHANICAL Phase of Operation: CRUISE Findings 1. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE 2. (F) ACFT/EQUIP,INADEQUATE CONTROL LOCATION - OWNER/BUILDER 3. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE - UNMARKED 4. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - INADEQUATE 5. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - UNMARKED It then goes on to discuss the pilot's decisions that contributed to running out of fuel: failing to adequately plan and prepare for the flight, failing to refuel the aircraft, and setting the fuel selector incorrectly. The next section discusses the actual loss of control, which is 100% on the pilot; he was too distracted trying to turn the glider he was actually flying back in to the motorized aircraft he wanted to be flying to fly it. That may sound harsh, but engine failure is a significant risk in single-engine aircraft, which pilots are generally expected to prepare for.
renewiltord 4y ago
Knowing nothing of flight except what I know from my pilot friends, my impression of Burt Rutan was that he makes killer planes because he was involved with the VSS Enterprise and then this and some other one. Of course that's unfair because he's in the business of making experimental planes. What I find curious is that this seems like the sort of field that would benefit from open-source design - flaws in design wouldn't be ported from other planes and shared visibility would benefit all. That makes me wonder if open-source software was inevitable after all. If it weren't for a bunch of early eccentrics, would we be primarily running binaries that we cannot edit? Good for them. Lucky to be in this field.
lp4vn 4y ago
Incredible that a site about design, interfaces and usability looks like a geocities page from the 90's. If the author is reading this page, sorry but someone had to tell you this.
- dang 4y ago
  "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
low_tech_love 4y ago
What? A unix terminal is literally one of the most fantastic, beautiful, and long-standing interface designs in human history.
- kej 4y ago
  Tog is pretty famously on the "the mouse is faster than the keyboard" side of the debate, so it doesn't really surprise me that he's not enamored with terminals and shells.
ranting-moth 4y ago
In aircraft crashes, there are usually a series of contributing factors to the crash. I totally agree that the valve's design/position was the major one. But he shouldn't have found himself in a situation where he had to change fuel tanks just few hundred feet in the air. I don't mean that in any bad way towards Denver. The world is a poorer place without him in it.

200 points by leejoramo 4y ago

mothsonasloth 4y ago

Slightly related - https://youtu.be/IQ_6-4MF79U?t=36 https://youtu.be/IQ_6-4MF79U?t=36

rexsteroxxy 4y ago
Haha nice find

lordleft 4y ago

I love John Denver's music and I am still haunted by his death, 24 years later. I had no idea his death was likely the result of poor user ergonomics. Engineering can kill.

pmarreck 4y ago

I would recommend not reading the coroner's report on how he died. (Chalking this one up to one of my late-night insomniac excursions down a rabbit hole.) At least it was quick. It was absolutely not pretty, though. He was (is? somewhere? maybe?) an amazing dude who pushed hard to get his music accepted

jmclnx 4y ago

Interesting read, I remember the crash but never heard what happened. Quote of the day from the article about the early days of Autos: >Car fires are a common enough occurrence along America's freeways. A gas line breaks under the hood and soon the engine is engulfed in flames. The cure? Pull over, get out, find a long stick, and start roasting marshmallows.

rootusrootus 4y ago
When I read that my first thought was "I bet most car fires are electrical or exhaust related, not from a random gas line leak."
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  The first "new" car I ever bought had a rubber gas line under the hood that was never properly clipped into place. It rubbed against the edge of the clip until eventually it cut through the line causing a leak. Fortunately I smelled the gasoline before it caught fire. I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Fortunately gasoline will generally evaporate in moderate heat rather than ignite! Unless there is another ignition source which might be common enough on a poorly maintained vehicle. I've driven cross-country with a leaky fuel rail, would not recommend!
  - sonofhans 4y ago
    > I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons. Yes, exactly, right there with you. A good car will still be good after 10 years of use. Any car that isn’t worth buying at that point isn’t worth buying to begin with.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I assume all fires in EVs are electrical. I doubt there are very many true electrical fires in ICE vehicles. Even if there is an arc, you need some kind of fuel to get a real fire going. Sometimes that might be the rubber/plastic components. But I feel like it's more likely to just be the ignition source for a fuel leak.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Plastic burns pretty well, my 1991 F150 had a fire under the hood that was entirely electrical.
    - giantg2 4y ago
NegativeLatency 4y ago
This is why I carry a fire extinguisher in my car
- knodi123 4y ago
  Right next to the marshmallows.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I used to do this. I redid my fuel lines and needed the correct type of extinguisher in case something happened during that. Then I just kept it in the car for years.
- oxfeed65261 4y ago
  I actually used the fire extinguisher I used to carry in my ‘79 Buick LeSabre to put out a fire but I ended up regretting it. Smoke started pouring out from under the hood, so I pulled over and popped the hood and saw a blazing fire. I ran in a panic to the trunk, got the extinguisher, and put out the fire. It turned out that the air conditioner compressor had seized up and stopped turning, causing the belt to overheat and catch fire. The fix was simple: remove the remains of the belt and everything was fine. Roll down the windows when it’s hot. If I had let the car burn out and be totaled I would have saved a lot of trouble, including endless transmission leaks and a busted U-joint which led to my coasting to the side of the road with the driveshaft (connected only at the front) dragging and bouncing and throwing up showers of sparks down the freeway.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    Had a similar thought, if the car is empty it's a different consideration to when it's loaded up with my camping gear or other possessions.
    - oxfeed65261 4y ago
      Yeah. I started carrying the fire extinguisher because my parents’ full-size Chevy van burned up with all of their camping supplies, clothes, guns, etc. from a three-month roadtrip. Also melted the front of their trailer before the highway patrol arrived. Brave/insane CHP officer pulled the propane tanks off of the trailer before they blew. I had nothing of value in the Buick. Ironic, as Ms. Morissette would say. My parents bought the Buick from my grandmother to drive home to Virginia after the van fire, and they gave it to me for my senior year of college. My fire was a couple of years after graduation.

geocrasher 4y ago

There's such a thing as over-optimization. So many people cannot see past their own justifications. Had the original builder of the aircraft stuck to the plans instead of trying to be clever, a life would have been saved.

karaterobot 4y ago

> ...the flaws that led to Denver's death were the work of the builder, and had nothing to do with Burt Rutan [the original designer]. These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to improve on Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to have been accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if it did kill the pilot. > We in the PC and web worlds have a lot to learn from this, too. We have a lot of bad design floating around that is just as perverse as fuel valves that face the wrong way, hidden behind firewalls... I agree that we have a lot of bad design in the PC and Web worlds, but I don't think that's the conclusion I'd draw at the end of the article. It seems like this a lesson about an engineer changing the design during implementation without understanding (or while misunderstanding) the original design. Chesterton's fuel valve.

Yizahi 4y ago
I would say that engineer may have a perfectly valid reason to do it, and it may be even a better overall decision, as was indeed in this case, preventing fuel pipes in the cockpit as I understood from the article. What is often lacking is testing of significant changes before giving final result to the user. And that, together with writing documentation and training is often deemed uninteresting and boring by engineer rich teams. "Community will fill up gaps" is often heard. Well maybe. And maybe community will write an accident analysis after something bad has happened.
- cduzz 4y ago
  This highlights the importance of SOPs, training, checklists etc. What's the value of a unit-less fuel gauge? Why not a warning light or two per tank and / or a calibrated fuel gauge? If you want to move the fuel hoses out of the cabin (good plan!) move the fuel hoses out of the cabin but leave the interface in place and make it electrical; put the mechanical switch in the difficult to find place and update the SOP to include "if the remote fuel switch fails use the mechanical switch in this difficult to reach location" Engineering around edge cases is hard. Which is just simply saying "engineering is hard". Doing things without addressing edge cases is just craft.

SoftTalker 4y ago

> He had fuel gauges in the rear of the aircraft, behind the pilot, and a mirror (!) used to look at them. Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a similar setup with the magnetic compass. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-the-md-80-magnetic-compass-behind-the-first-officers-seat https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th...

tivert 4y ago
> Sounds bizarre but the DC-9 (and MD80 and B717) have a similar setup with the magnetic compass. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-the-md-80-magnetic-compass-behind-the-first-officers-seat https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25142/why-is-th... The Youtube video linked from that question that actually shows the compass setup "isn't available anymore," but I found it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140323065924/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_oyBC5RIj8 https://web.archive.org/web/20140323065924/http://www.youtub...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> If you approach software design the way experts in commercial and military cockpit human factors approach their craft, you will end up with designs that are fast, familiar, and forgiving. Such designs would be a refreshing change in the ghastly world of PC software. They'd be a refreshing change in the world of general aviation, too. This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of required flight hours. If I required my users to train for hundreds of hours before using my software by themselves, I would make all sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a command line or text UI interface might actually be the most productive. However, that is not the case. Commercial and military cockpit design are all designed for the efficiency of the expert (especially military cockpits, since you do not want a “Are you sure” confirmation dialog during a dogfight).

tivert 4y ago
>> If you approach software design the way experts in commercial and military cockpit human factors approach their craft, you will end up with designs that are fast, familiar, and forgiving. Such designs would be a refreshing change in the ghastly world of PC software. They'd be a refreshing change in the world of general aviation, too. > This completely ignores hundreds or even thousands of required flight hours. If I required my users to train for hundreds of hours before using my software by themselves, I would make all sorts of different UI design choices. In fact, a command line or text UI interface might actually be the most productive. However, that is not the case. Not necessarily. Your objection seems to be relevant to the "fast" part, but there's a lot of software that (for instance) just ignores familiar established patterns because the designer wanted to be different. It almost all cases, it would be a great improvement if they just stopped doing that.

pcurve 4y ago

John Denver was an experienced pilot who owned multiple planes with 2,700 flight hours. Unfortunately, on this particular experimental plane with an odd setup, just an hour or two.

tomohawk 4y ago

We got a new car. It comes with a touch screen instead of physical controls. We really wanted to avoid the screen, but ended up settling on the least offensive / most likely usable for us car vehicle. There was nothing out there in new car land that we liked. It is no longer safe doing simple things such as turning on/off recirculation. We like fresher air, so generally want recirculation off. However, it is not uncommon to see a truck in front of us suddenly belch a lot of smoke. In the old car, this was no problem. Push the recirc button and keep the bad stuff from getting into the car. In the new car, that would require hitting the correct button near the bottom of the screen to cause it to bring up the environmental controls, and then hitting the right button near the now top of the screen to toggle the recirc. Totally unsafe when in traffic. Add to that the settings that don't stay set every time you turn off the car, requiring manually going through and setting things up - it's not only unsafe but horrible.

CamperBob2 4y ago
... and yet, you still bought the car. I think I see the problem.
boredumb 4y ago
It's amazing how car manufacturers have captured the frustration of navigating through your locked mobile device to do something arbitrary while driving and embedded that experience directly into the dashboard.
- elzbardico 4y ago
  We have laws against using phones while driving for very good reasons everyone understands. And then car manufacturers decide to make turning Air Condition on and off into a experience as much distracting as using a smartphones, so they can save a couple hundred dollars in a 30.000 dollars vehicle. And because accidents caused by stupid car UIs are not as obvious an newsworthy as texting and driving, no politician has decided out that pushing for legislation for tactile controls can give him votes, so, nothing is done, legislation-wise, to curb this practice.

pkamb 4y ago

> The valve: The builder not only placed the valve in a non-standard location [behind the pilot's left shoulder], he also rotated it in such a way that turning the valve to the right turned on the left fuel tank. This ensured that a pilot unfamiliar with the aircraft, upon hearing the engine begin missing and spotting in his mirror that the left fuel tank was empty, would attempt to rotate the fuel valve to the right, away from the full tank, guaranteeing his destruction. So the builder intended you turn the backwards valve right, towards the left wing, and that activates the left fuel tank? This certainly sounds like a better human interface than turning the backwards valve left, towards the right wing, and activating the left tank.

wkat4242 4y ago
Good point. I guess it's the pilot muscle memory with counter clockwise being left and clockwise being right that screws this concept up. If the valve is in front of the pilot both methods match, if it's behind they are opposite. I could imagine this issue only becoming apparent in such a situation. I think this aircraft should really have had a both setting though. Normally the fuel selector is only needed in case of leaks or unbalance.

tivert 4y ago

> And, indeed, the NTSB, as per its long history of setting aside findings, human factors or otherwise, that might conflict with a verdict of pilot error, ruled that the responsibility for this crash lay with the pilot.

gffrd 4y ago
Edward Tufte would like a word …

retrocryptid 4y ago

"These flaws led from the builder's sincere desire to improve on Rutan's work, a goal that could actually be said to have been accomplished from an engineering perspective, even if it did kill the pilot." Tog does not mince words.

wkat4242 4y ago
It does look like this was a common change though considering there were 2 similar accidents before. Perhaps a community forum where this modification was proposed?
- aidenn0 4y ago
  IIUC the two similar incidents were in the exact same plane (but did not cause a crash) not in a plane with a similar modification. [edit] > According to other pilots who were familiar with the airplane and/or had flown it, to change the fuel selector a pilot had to: 1) Remove his hand from the right side control stick if he was hand flying the aircraft; 2) Release the shoulder harness; 3) Turn his upper body 90 degrees to the left to reach the handle; and 4) Turn the handle to another position. Two pilots shared their experiences of having inadvertently run a fuel tank dry with nearly catastrophic consequences because of the selector and sight gauge locations[1]. Note "familiarity with the airplane" not "a similar Long EZ" which they use later to talk about investigators inadvertently depressing the rudder pedal when trying to use the valve. 1: https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/ https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver...

robinsonb5 4y ago

Interesting article - but I find it odd that something published on a site devoted to interaction design should have such small text - and full-width at that. Currently using Firefox on Windows - I don't often have to touch the zoom setting, but for this one I had to crank it to 150% to read the article comfortably.

mhandley 4y ago
Probably looked fine on an 800x600 screen when the article was written.
asdfman123 4y ago
While looking at the site, I dropped my phone on my toe, bruising it severely. Now I have to go to the hospital, all thanks to bad design.
- function_seven 4y ago
  Five Whys! Why did you go to the hospital? "Because I severely bruised my toe." Why? "Because I dropped my phone on it." Why? "Because I was trying to hold it with 3 fingers, while using my thumb and forefinger to attempt a zoom pinch thing." Why? "Because the text on this ergonomics article was too hard to read." Why? "Because the web in 1999 was a very different place." Verdict: Your fault for trying to read a computer website on a telephone. :)
  - asdfman123 4y ago
    This is victim blaming
dang 4y ago
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Imagine if one were building a one-off vehicle and it had a critical control placed in an ergonomic spot with flammable fluid or maybe hot or high pressure lines routed through the cabin to necessarily reach it. What would the response be if they posted it to HN, Reddit, Youtube? They would get harassed endlessly about how dangerous that it. You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should "never" run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc. All sorts of low effort comments would be made to score cheap virtue points dunking on the builder. It would be one giant safety circle jerk complete with clipboards and safety vests. And that kind of "I know the best practices but I don't deeply understand the requirements of this specific implementation" kills people, like apparently John Denver. This really should be sobering to many here. You could have been that builder. But what will we take away from it? Not the hard uncomfortable lesson to keep your mouth shut and don't touch anything in the name of "best practices" until you truly know the ins and outs of the application. Heavens no. We'll just make out our UIs suck a little less and call it good. That's much easier.

Arrath 4y ago
> You should "never" run fuel through the cabin. You should "never" run high pressure hydraulics near an occupant, etc. Hah, I wish. I've run older construction equipment where all the control levers worked by actuating valves directly on the various hydraulic lines, with easily a couple dozen in- and out-let hoses routed through the cabin and through the control panel, each one full of high pressure, high temperature hydraulic fluid. The worst was in the machines with inoperative A/C in the summer, those hoses might as well have been big radiator fins in the cabin.

arprocter 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Long-EZ is the aircraft in question

mcguire 4y ago
The NTSB Report https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/28002/pdf https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...

greedo 4y ago

If you read the crash report, it's pretty clear that Denver was both aware of this design flaw and failed to adequately fill the tanks. https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver-crash/ https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/close-up-the-john-denver...

w10-1 4y ago
John Denver failed to fill his gas tank -- twice. Multiple Long-EZ's that failed over water ditched without injury. About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running out of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to do neither: fill your tank, and turn around. As for design changes, builders have tried hundreds of modifications to the Long-EZ design, and many of the successful ones are now the standard of care. Indeed, unlike software generally, there is usually a strong and clear standard of care for each experimental plane model, as voiced by the builders with the most cogent explanations coupled with their own flying safety record (benevolent dictators eating their own dog food). The experimental aircraft community differs precisely in that everyone who flies their own plane is not the chicken but the pig (and builders who talk a great game are ignored).
- aidenn0 4y ago
  > About 95% of all private plane crashes are due to running out of fuel or flying into clouds. It is ridiculously easy to do neither: fill your tank, and turn around. Denver was told by a technician that the tanks had "less than half in the right tank and less than a quarter in the left tank" These are each 26 gallon tanks. The technician was wrong because the gauges were non-linear (and had no markings). Denver should have checked himself (and hopefully knew the gauges were non-linear), but either didn't check or didn't know. 10+ gallons (what he likely thought he had in the right tank) is more than enough for the flight he was attempting.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

[flagged]

wkat4242 4y ago

So... 114 of these crashed according to Wikipedia. That's quite a lot for an experimental type. It doesn't say how many were built but it's pretty severe. I agree in this case it was a nonstandard modification that caused it but still this does not seem to be the safest type to fly. One thing I also read was that the valve was very hard to turn in this case. Which is probably something that he shouldn't have taken off with in that state. Especially because this was not even a thing that came out of the blue, it was noticed during precheck and the owner even said he never turned it during flight because it was so difficult. Meaning in my opinion that it's wholly unsuitable as a control with critical importance to the flight process. Especially for an aircraft without a "both" setting. It looks super cool though, I'll see if it exists for flight simulator. PS the jail number was N555JD, sounds a bit like a movie.

hn8305823 4y ago
Most Experimental class crashes are on the first flight. https://www.flyingmag.com/blogs-fly-wire-ntsb-safety-study-targets-experimental-aircraft/ https://www.flyingmag.com/blogs-fly-wire-ntsb-safety-study-t... > One of the eye-opening stats was that most accidents involving EAB aircraft happen very early in the airplane’s life, often on the very first flight, and early into that flight. Pilots who survived EAB crashes often said the engine quit or lost power, or that pitch control on takeoff or climbout was not what they anticipated. Experimental aircraft crashes also account for 25% of GA crashes: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/general-aviation-safety https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/general-aviation-safety In the US 51% or more of the construction must be done by the original owner/pilot and they must also complete the first flight and subsequent test flights themselves. These test flights must follow a plan submitted by the pilot and approved by the FAA, but that is a fairly routine/templated process when building from a known kit. If your build deviates from the standard kit you can expect the FAA to require a longer/more rigorous test flight plan. The test plan is usually focused on verifying the engine and flight controls operate as expected and documenting the stall speed/characteristics for that specific airframe.
edrxty 4y ago
That's around 1 in 8 registered airframes. The derived designs were even worse, 6 of 31 berkuts have crashed. Ultimately a big factor is they aren't usually built as kit planes but rather full scratch builds. Each builder is independently sourcing materials and composites are very unforgiving. Kit planes are generally not that bad as the number of ways you can fail in construction is relatively well bounded and there's a lot of feedback into the design side to mitigate these common errors. I'm working on an RV8 and the errata is really something to behold. It's an older 90s design but the factory is still changing parts out on me occasionally as they discover issues. This is much more in line with how certified aircraft work so it stands to reason that they would enjoy a better safety record.

hn8305823 4y ago

> Just as with Unix, just as with DOS, the more confounding everything is, the better it is Unix == confounding? I'm sorry but even as a complete n00b and needing to buy "Unix in a Nutshell" in the early 1990's, Unix refreshingly made complete sense compared to DOS+QEMM+win3.1+IRQ's+spend all your time tuning and trying to get things to maybe work. It was like night and day. Yes there were things to learn (hence the book) but it was easy and just worked. Edit: referring to SunOS/Solaris on Sun hardware in the early 1990's vs DOS

jeremyjh 4y ago
Yes, few would dispute the idea that in 1999 UNIX was a paragon of usability engineering.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

SilasX 4y ago

Since no one's mentioned it, another interesting incidence of this was when Anton Yelchin (who played Chekov in the newer Star Trek movies) died from mistakenly putting his Jeep into neutral when he thought he put it in park. Chrysler was using a new (and overclever) shifter design where you couldn't easily confirm by look or feel what gear it was in, and so was prone to being misidentified. Yelchin death reporting https://filmindustry.network/star-trek-actor-anton-yelchin-dies-fatal-accident/31377 https://filmindustry.network/star-trek-actor-anton-yelchin-d... Consumer Reports article about the issues behind the recall: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fca-recalls-confusing-shifters-in-chrysler-dodge-jeep/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fca-recalls-confu...

buildsjets 4y ago
I rented one of these Jeeps a few months before Anton Yelchin's death, and my first reaction that was that it was an accident waiting to happen, that I expected to see a rash of senior citizens driving though storefronts because of it, and that I would avoid parking near them in the future. One of the biggest issues is that not only does the gearshift lever not move to indicate the selected gear, but that the gearshift lever has multiple modes of operation - a short press would select reverse, but a long press would select drive.

ubermonkey 4y ago

It's super weird to me that the article just presents as an article of faith that the NTSB inappropriately blames pilots.

mcguire 4y ago
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, unless the aircraft just suddenly fell apart, the pilot is always involved somehow. For example, in this case, the direct cause of the crash was the pilot providing a hard right (?) rudder input. Second, and more cynically, the representation of pilots in the investigation is the weakest (and identifying the pilots as at fault causes the least economic consequences on everybody). For example, if you look back to when Airbus introduced the fly-by-wire system with moded inputs, their planes were dropping like bricks. (Including by the plane's test pilot at the Paris air show.) However, most (all?) of those incidents were assigned to pilot error in spite of the fact that an airplane that would change its flight characteristics or even conflict with pilot actions was a fun new thing.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  The airshow one looks very much like pilot error... not a great example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q You have an experienced pilot who knew the plane and its safety systems disable alpha floor protection before completely botching the approach. He could have aborted and gone around to get set up properly. But he didn't. Instead he dropped to 30 feet on idle engine thrust, in a high drag configuration, and didn't press the TOGA button until 4 seconds before the crash. That's not enough time for the engine to spool up from idle. I don't support prosecuting pilots except in the most egregious cases and I think involuntary manslaughter was the right call here. Edit: The pilot claimed to have done this maneuver 20 times prior to the crash.
Zak 4y ago
It is weird, particularly when the NTSB report lists the following factors before the pilot's errors: Occurrence #1: LOSS OF ENGINE POWER(TOTAL) - NONMECHANICAL Phase of Operation: CRUISE Findings 1. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE 2. (F) ACFT/EQUIP,INADEQUATE CONTROL LOCATION - OWNER/BUILDER 3. (F) FUEL SYSTEM,SELECTOR/VALVE - UNMARKED 4. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - INADEQUATE 5. (F) ENGINE INSTRUMENTS,FUEL QUANTITY GAGE - UNMARKED It then goes on to discuss the pilot's decisions that contributed to running out of fuel: failing to adequately plan and prepare for the flight, failing to refuel the aircraft, and setting the fuel selector incorrectly. The next section discusses the actual loss of control, which is 100% on the pilot; he was too distracted trying to turn the glider he was actually flying back in to the motorized aircraft he wanted to be flying to fly it. That may sound harsh, but engine failure is a significant risk in single-engine aircraft, which pilots are generally expected to prepare for.

renewiltord 4y ago

Knowing nothing of flight except what I know from my pilot friends, my impression of Burt Rutan was that he makes killer planes because he was involved with the VSS Enterprise and then this and some other one. Of course that's unfair because he's in the business of making experimental planes. What I find curious is that this seems like the sort of field that would benefit from open-source design - flaws in design wouldn't be ported from other planes and shared visibility would benefit all. That makes me wonder if open-source software was inevitable after all. If it weren't for a bunch of early eccentrics, would we be primarily running binaries that we cannot edit? Good for them. Lucky to be in this field.

lp4vn 4y ago

Incredible that a site about design, interfaces and usability looks like a geocities page from the 90's. If the author is reading this page, sorry but someone had to tell you this.

dang 4y ago
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

low_tech_love 4y ago

What? A unix terminal is literally one of the most fantastic, beautiful, and long-standing interface designs in human history.

kej 4y ago
Tog is pretty famously on the "the mouse is faster than the keyboard" side of the debate, so it doesn't really surprise me that he's not enamored with terminals and shells.

ranting-moth 4y ago

In aircraft crashes, there are usually a series of contributing factors to the crash. I totally agree that the valve's design/position was the major one. But he shouldn't have found himself in a situation where he had to change fuel tanks just few hundred feet in the air. I don't mean that in any bad way towards Denver. The world is a poorer place without him in it.