4 ms·
When I hear of the preference of form over function for data, I think about the sinking of the SS El Faro. The captain relied on weather data from a Comercial
by gmiller123456 2y ago
When I hear of the preference of form over function for data, I think about the sinking of the SS El Faro. The captain relied on weather data from a Comercial service because they were pretty. On the "black box" one member of the bridge had said something about the weather stats and another person mocked "oh, but that's not a pretty graphic" (the captain was below sleeping). They had tried to get the captain to agree to change course many times, but he always refused telling them to come back if things got worse, unaware of how bad it already was since he was below deck. He had never bothered to notice the data his service provided was several hours old, and ended up sailing right into the eyeball of a hurricane.
- escot 2y agoInteresting, do you have a source?
- gmiller123456 2y agoThere's a lot out there, it is considered one of the worst US marine disasters in modern times. This seems to be a good overview: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-storms-only-on-ap-9d5904f83f6a4cf784828107fa7d038d https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-storms-only-o... Wikipedia is a good place to dig deeper, the article has over 60 references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro The NTSB report is over 300 pages, I have not read it: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/MAR1701.pdf https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... There have also been several HN discussions, this has the most votes (477): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16757343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16757343