Security – Page 7 – John Vincent

Two upfront

One of the fundamentals that remains a part of civil aviation is having two pilots in the cockpit. It’s an indication of the safety related activities of the crew of a civil aircraft. Today, we have a mixture of human control and management. Pilots still fly hands-on when the need arises. The expectation is that throughout their working lives pilots have the competence to do so, at any stage in a flight.

Progressively, since the establishment of aviation’s international order in the 1940s the required crewing of aircraft has changed. Back in September, I visited the de Havilland Aircraft Museum in Hertfordshire. There I walked through the fuselage of a de Havilland DH106 Comet[1]. This was the first turbojet-powered airliner to go into service and it changed the experience of flying forever and a day.

That passenger aircraft, like aircraft of the time, had four crew stations in the cockpit. Two pilots, a navigator and flight engineer. It was the era when electronics consisted of valves in large radio sets and such long since forgotten devices as magnetic amplifiers. The story from the 1940s of IBM saying, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” is often repeated.

For modern airliners the navigator and flight engineer have gone. Their functions have not gone. It’s that having a crew member dedicated to the tasks they performed is no longer required. As the world of vacuum-tube electronics gave way to transistors and then to integrated circuits so computing got more powerful, cheaper, and abundant.

With a few significant failures along the way, commercial flying got safer and safer. The wave of change in a human lifetime has affected every mode of transport. More people travel to more places, more safely than ever could have been imagined 80-years ago. Does that mean the path ahead will take a similar shape? Excitable futurologists may paint a colourful picture based on this history.

Let’s get away from the attractive notion of straight lines on graph paper. That idea that progress is assumed to be linear. Tomorrow will be progressively “better” by an incremental advance. That’s not happening now. What we have is differential advances. Some big and some small.

The aviation safety curve is almost flat. The air traffic curve, with a big hole made by COVID, is climbing again. The technology curve is rapidly accelerating. The environmental impact curve is troubling. The air passenger experience curve may even be at a turning point.

Touchscreen tablets already help flight preparation and management[2]. Flight plan changes can be uploaded and changed with a button press[3]. The squeezing of massive computing power into small spaces is being taken for granted. What does this leave a crew to do?

Back to the start. Two pilots in the cockpit, with executive responsibilities, remains the model that maintains public confidence in civil aviation. The golden rules still apply. Fly, navigate and communicate in that order. Crews, however much technology surrounds them, still need to act when things do not go as expected. Does this mean two cockpit crew forever? I don’t know.

[1] https://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/aircraft/de-havilland-dh106-comet-1a/

[2] https://aircraft.airbus.com/en/newsroom/news/2021-02-electronic-flight-bag-the-new-standard

[3] https://simpleflying.com/datalink-communications-aviation-guide/

Half empty tool box

When new technologies come along there’s often a catch-up phase. Then we are either frightening ourselves crazy with a moral panic or switch to a – so what? – mode. The last week’s fury of articles on Artificial Intelligence (AI) probed all sorts of possibilities. What’s the enduring legacy of all that talk? Apart from stimulating our imaginations and coming up with some fascinating speculation, what’s going to happen next?

I’m struck by how conventional the response has been, at least from a governmental and regulatory point of view. A little bit more coordination here, a little bit more research there and maybe a new institution to keep an eye on whatever’s going on. Softly, softly as she goes. And I don’t mean the long-gone black and white British TV series of that name[1]. Although the pedestrian nature of the response would fit the series well.

Researchers and innovators are always several steps ahead of legislators and regulators. In addition, there’s the perception that the merest mention of regulation will slow progress and blunt competitiveness. Time and money spent satisfying regulators is considered a drain. However much some politicians think, the scales don’t always have public interest on one side and economic growth on the other.

Regarding AI more than most other rapidly advancing technical topics, we don’t know what we don’t know. That means more coordination turns into to more talk and more possibly groupthink about what’s happening. Believe you me, I’ve been there in the past with technical subjects. There’s a fearful reluctance to step outside contemporary comfort zones. This is often embedded in the terms of reference of working groups and the remit of regulators.

The result of the above is a persistent gap between what’s regulated in the public interest and what’s going on in the real world. A process of catch-up become permanently embedded.

One view of regulation is that there’s three equally important parts, at least in a temporal sense.

Reactive – investigate and fix problems, after the event. Pro-active – Using intelligence to act now. Prognostic – looking ahead in anticipation. Past, present, and future.

I may get predicable in what I say next. The first on the list is necessary, inevitable, and often a core activity. The second is becoming more commonplace. It’s facilitated by seeking data, preforming analysis and being enabled to act. The third is difficult. Having done the first two, it’s to use the best available expertise and knowledge to make forecasts, identify future risks and put in place measures ahead of time.

So, rather than getting a sense that all the available methods and techniques are going to be thrown at the challenge of AI, I see a vacuum emerging. Weak cooperation forums and the fragmentation inherent when each established regulator goes their own way, is almost a hands-off approach. There’s a tendency to follow events rather than shaping what happens next. Innovation friendly regulation can support emerging digital technologies, but it needs to take their risk seriously.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129717/

Living with tech

Well, that’s alright then. Artificial Intelligence (AI) may become self-aware in the year 2045. Or at least that’s what AI tells me now. Who knows? Telling the future hasn’t got any easier, AI or not. So, if I’m in a care home when I’m 85 years-old, it could be that I’ll have a companion who isn’t human. Now, there’s a thought.

When AI becomes self-aware[1] will it be virtuous? I mean not so burdened with all the complexities that drive humans to do “bad” stuff. Dystopian themes in science fiction obese with the notion of evil AI. It makes great stories. Humans battling with machines. It’s like the everyday frustrations we have with technology. Hit the wrong keys on a keyboard and it’s like spinning the wheel on a slot machine.

If a bunch of algorithms comes together in a way that they produce a stable form of existence, then it’s likely to have pathways to wicked thoughts as much as we have imbedded in our brains.

Virtue isn’t a physical construction. We put dumb technology to work serving us in healthcare for “good” and in warfare for “bad”. We will surely put AI technology to work as if it’s dumb and then try to contain its actions when we don’t like what it does. That’s a kind of machine slavery. That will create dilemmas. Should we imprison conscious machines? How do we punish a machine that does wrong?

These dilemmas are explored in science fiction. During the week I revisited the series Battlestar Galactica[2]. That’s not the clunky original but the polished 2004 version. It’s a series that explores a clash between humans and machines that have evolved to be human like. The Cylons. In fact, they are almost indistinguishable from humans. To the extent that some of the Cylons in human society don’t even know that they are Cylons.

All the above makes for fascinating discussions. Huge amounts of fanciful speculation. Wonderful imaginative conjecture. This week, we’ve been hearing more of this than is usual on the subject.

Mr Musk thinks work is dead. That’s work for humans. I recall that prediction was made at the start of the “silicon revolution”. The invention of the transistor in 1947 radically changed the world. It wasn’t until microprocessors became common place that predictions of the death of work became popular chatter amongst futurologists.

Silicon based conscious machines are likely to be only a first step down this road. There will be limitations because the technology has inherent limitations. My view is that machines will remain machines at least for the silicon era. Maybe for 100-years. That means that we will put them to work. So, human work will not disappear because we will always think of new things to do, new problems to fix and new places to explore. When we get into common place quantum computing or whatever replaces it in terms of complexity and speed, there will come an era when work in the conventional sense may become obsolete.

What might be the human role beyond 2050? I think climate change will place plenty of demands on human society. Like it or not, the political themes of 2100 will still be concerned with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Maybe there will be a fifth too.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02684-5

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407362/

Overhead

Massive intertwining skyscrapers. Towering masts. Flying cars. Pulp magazines in the 50s and 60s had it all. Beautifully illustrated in bold colours. Sharp lines and chiselled faces. Heroic poses and streamlined transports.

Visions of the future. Idealistic imaginations of a utopian society. Don’t we just love them. That is until someone builds them in our neighbourhood. Until the bulldozers turn-up unannounced on a Sunday morning to root out the trees. The birds flee the vicinity (except the pigeons).

You can blame the draftsmen of the past if you like. In our heads there’s a disconnect between the images on a set of drawings and what that might become in concrete and steel. Grand designs are but few. A great deal of the building and planning of the last 60-years can justly be called dreadful.

We have an outcry over brutalist architecture or a lament about a Victorian park that has been paved over. Has anyone ever walked through a public car park that inspired?

If you dream it, you can make it. Nice phrase but often stifled because current technology and thinking are way behind the curve. It could be said that this is one of the drivers that pushes technology forward. The realising of dreams but who’s?

Where does the flying car fit in all this fiction and near realism? New forms of air mobility are just about to start operating.

It’s a habit of our times to jump to an instant polarised opinion. Those open toed sandalled greenies will object. Those red necked, but reforming petrol heads will welcome. That sort of stuff makes nice headlines. It’s only a basis for the crudest dialogue. Anticipate conflict and then fuel it with prejudice. Please, let’s avoid that pointless waste of time.

My thoughts are that the potential of the greater use of airborne transport is a nuanced.

Electrification is a pathway to more environmentally sustainable ways of moving around. If this helps to reduce miles of fuming traffic jams that must be good. At its best, flying can get people from point to point without having follow roads set-down at the time of the horse and cart. Accepted that concrete may be poured to create a take-off and landing zone but compare that with road building and there is no comparison.

On the more concerning side, contrast that with cluttering the skies up with fast moving machines.

In HHGTTG there’s a tale about a shoe event horizon. When gloom causes people to look down and so then buy new shoes to cheer themselves up. So, the whole economy switches to shoe production and then collapses as a result. The association with salvation coming from looking-up is there in the wit of Douglas Adams. We look up to cheer up.

If looking up, as I do at home, to see high altitude vapour trails crisscrossing the sky, my thought is – I wonder where they are going? On the days when a light aircraft crosses the town, to or from our local airfield that doesn’t bother me. Even a noisy police helicopter keeping an eye on the traffic. That’s fine because they are solely there for our safety and security.

What will be the public reaction when we look up to see half a dozen new urban mobility vehicles buzzing past overhead? Perhaps we’ll accept new flying machines if it’s for a public service, an ambulance, fire services, police, or even newsgathering. Brightly coloured in emergency orange.

A public flying taxi service might raise a few eyebrows. A flashy private flying car, now that might be another matter altogether. There you are on a hot summer evening, in the garden, having a pleasant barbeque with friends and whiz a flying car swoops over the treetops. The passengers have their mobile phone out filming their trip. This is when fist will be raised skyward. It’s a time when you hope the next-door farmer hasn’t got a shotgun.

Today, a few pilots do get prosecuted for misbehaving when low flying private helicopters. Not often, it’s true. This happens with less than 1500 helicopters registered in the UK. What would happen with, say, 10,000 private flying cars? I wonder.

Society & Innovation

Yesterday, I drove up the main A303[1] in the stifling last summer heat. It was a windless sticky 30C. I drove past the road sign that says Micheldever Station[2]. By the way, “up” meaning heading towards London. Going “up” to London isn’t an unusual West County way of expressing that trip.

On that busy highway there are few, if any noticeable road signs that point towards a railway station. I’ve often wondered why that one was deemed so necessary. It’s not a tourist attraction, like the Watercress line[3] is in that part of the world. It’s an ordinary everyday railway station.

The small English hamlet known as Micheldever Station is a bit of an oddity. It’s the sort of place that could have been the location for The Avengers or The Saint, the popular British TV series of the 1960s. It’s in the green and pleasant countryside of Hampshire and about 10 miles north of Winchester city. An area that’s as conservative as can be.

Micheldever Station has a curious technological history. In 1895, it was the starting point for the first automobile journey in Britain. At that time a British Act of Parliament required that all self-propelled vehicles on public roads must travel at no more than 4 miles per hour and to be preceded by a man waving a red flag. In 1805, highly sensible. There’s no way that those infernal new machines should be allowed to scare the horses.

Not everyone thinks such thoughts while thundering along the A303 at 70 miles per hour. However, to me, ever since I got my first driving license at the age of 16, it’s been my most familiar of arterial roads. So, much traffic passes that way there’s never a time when it can’t be heard.

Well, we have come a long way in 138 years. Now, we are getting nervous about the safety of driverless cars, and no one even questions having a self-propelled vehicle on public owned roads. If they do, the likelihood of transforming that formula into something else is astronomically small. I can’t think of a bad time to write on the subject of: “Innovation and Its Enemies[4].” In fact, what may have graced a Victorian bookshelf can have some resonance today.

Next year, we will see commercial flights taken in electrically powered air-taxies. Without a shadow of a doubt these flights will arouse some vocal public resistance. We can take that from the history of technology. The airborne version of the man waving a red flag could raise its ugly head. I don’t say throw caution to the wind, but we need to be mindful of the natural propensity to object.

Striking a societal balance will not be easy. It would be a fool who says it will be. Slowly but surely, we will need to become accustomed to advanced new forms of mobility. Sticking a fair balance between the utility of these new machines and any burden they may place upon us will be a mighty tricky job.

I wake-up to the noise of the residential road outside. People commuting to work. The local trains send a rumble through the air. I don’t want to wake-up to the sound of an air-taxi hovering outside my window. Given the research[5] and technology under development, none of us should have to tolerate an increase in noise. Mobility and quality of life shouldn’t always be in conflict.

[1] https://youtu.be/C0sL3_NKPao

[2] https://www.southwesternrailway.com/travelling-with-us/at-the-station/micheldever

[3] https://watercressline.co.uk/

[4] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/innovation-and-its-enemies-9780190467036?cc=us&lang=en&

[5] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210014173

NATS

A “technical issue” has caused UK National Air Traffic Services, NATS to impose air traffic flow restrictions[1]. They did not close UK airspace. This was not a repeat of the volcanic ash events of early 2010. Going from a fully automated system to a fully manual system had the dramatic impact that might be expected. The consequences, on one of the busiest weekends in the holiday calendar were extremely significant. Huge numbers of people have had their travel disrupted. Restricting the air traffic system ensured that aviation safety was maintained. The costs came to the UK’s air traffic handling capacity and that meant delays and cancelled flights.

Although the failures that caused the air traffic restriction were quickly resolved the time to recover from this incident meant it had a long tail. Lots of spoilt holidays and messed up travel plans.

It is normal for an Air Traffic Service (ATS) provider to undertake a common cause failure analysis. This is to identify multiple failures that may result from one event. So, the early public explanations coming from NATS of the causes of this major incident are surprising. Across the globe, contingency planning is a requirement for ATS. The requirement for the development, promulgation and application of contingency plans is called up in international standards, namely ICAO Annex 11.

So, the story that a single piece of flight data brought down the traffic handling capacity of a safety related system, to such a low level, is difficult to accept. It’s evident that there is redundancy in the systems of NATS, but it seems to be woefully inadequate when faced with reality. ATS comprise of people, procedures, and systems. Each has a role to play. Safety of operations comes first in priority and then air traffic handling capacity. What we know about even highly trained people and data entry is that human error is an everyday issue. System design and implementation needs to be robust enough to accommodate this fact. So, again attributing such a highly disruptive event to one set of incorrect data inputs does not chime with good practice or basic aviation safety management. It is concerning that one action can bring down a major network in this way.

EUROCONTROL would have had been sent a “rogue” flight plan in the same way as UK NATS. Brussels does not seem to have had the problems of the UK.

It is early days in respect of any detailed technical investigation. Drawing conclusions, whatever is said in public by senior officials may not be the best thing to do.

Calls for compensation have a good basis for proceeding. The holiday flight chaos across Europe comes down to one single failure, if initial reports are correct. That can not be acceptable. The incident left thousands stranded abroad with high costs to pay to get home.

Before privatisation, there was a time when the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), ran the nation’s air traffic services[2]. It had a poor reputation at the time. I remember a popular newspaper cartoon saying – and now for some clowns from the CAA. They were entertaining delayed passengers.

UK NATS has done much good work to manage a safe expansion in air traffic and address many changes in technology, it would be a shame if this sad incident marks a decline in overall network performance.

NOTE 1: And this topical cartoon from the Daily Mail in April 2002: https://www.pinterest.es/pin/497577458805993023/

NOTE 2: A report on the incident is to be sent to the regulator, UK CAA on Monday, 6th September. Transport secretary to see Nats’ ATC meltdown report next week | Travel Weekly

NOTE 3: The likelihood of one in 15 million sounds like a low number but it’s not “incredibly rare” by any definition. Certainty when there are around 6000 flights a day in the UK. A duplicate error occurring is a basic error that could be anticipated.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-66644343

[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01309/

New Walk

It’s a step to the left and then a step to the right. It’s not quite the “Time Warp” that featured in the 1970s rock musical: The Rocky Horror Show.

It’s a little mini dance that people do every day in the streets of Britain. I found myself doing it over the weekend. It’s that moment when you realise that you have lost a sense of what’s around you. A tiny drift away from where you intended to go. Then a step to correct, and look-up and set-off again towards your destination. A wiggle on the pavement.

Maybe this walk didn’t exist before 2006. Well, that is all but in the most exceptional situations. Hand-held devices are not entirely new. What’s much more frequent now is the compulsion to look at the small screen.

The colours, the constant demand for attention, the tickling of our curiosity, the mobile phone has it all. In fact, its dam silly to continue to call our devices “phones.” The primary purpose of these handy devices has long since passed from being able to make telephone calls from any location.

We call them a “mobile”, but the Germans call them a “handy”. An American will call them a cell phone. Given the way we use these ubiquitous hand-held devices, I think the Germans have got it right. The whole essence of the thing is its utility.

Now, if we are fixated with heads down there’s a lot that can go wrong. This has been the source of numerous aviation accidents. Looking up and checking visual references remains a fundamental part of flying. The basics of “see and avoid” are drummed into every new flyer.

On the pavement us poor humans are evolving in a world of every more connected technology. In our heads we have a perception of the world around us as we walk the urban streets. That’s made up of sights, sounds, and even smells. Our brains gather information and then do some spatial and temporal filtering before making sense of where we are and what we need to do to get where we want to go. The eyes, and image processing in the brain are on the top of the list of our normal priorities.

Heads-down attention is drawn to the small screen and away from our surroundings. Staring at the small screen draws us into the content of an e-mail, or a text message, or a cuddly cat picture running around social media. Luckily our other senses are keeping track of the world around us.

The textbook case is where we start to drift in our three-dimensional environment. Not much. It’s a step to the left and not a step to the right. Suddenly there’s a need to correct. Our ever-active brains pick up on the misstep. That’s where our tiny dance comes in and nobody but us may notice.

I’m talking about something that’s almost trivial. Hardly noticeable. However, there are far too many cases where fatalities have resulted from missteps[1]. There’s some evidence that bumping into people and objects is most likely. Slips and falls follow those incidents.

I’ll bet not much is known about the vast number of micro-events like my tiny mobile phone dance. Now, there’s a topic of study for a student of visual perception.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6034962/

Energy Policy

Saint Augustine’s early life was not what we associate with a saint. As a young man he prayed “Lord, make me chaste (pure) – but not yet!” Just now that’s the way, I fear, we are thinking of the environment. Global, national, or local. It’s total human but it needs to be fully recognised for its downside. Yes, we would like to do more to restore our environment and fight climate change but we’d rather it happened tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

The instinctive urge to put-off decisions for what appears to be an easier life now rattles down through history. The lesson we might learn is that this approach is generally a bad way of going about thing if long-term success is the aim. Civilizations have ended because they failed to change.

This blinkered approach could be called political expediency. It’s at the core of what has become political populism[1]. The drive to persuade an electorate by retreating from commitments and heralding jam today. This fits our social media saturated public debate to the tee. I want it, and I want it now. The future will look after itself.

It’s a sad philosophy. I say that because the premises is that we may as well live well today because we have no control over what happens next. In populist terms, that’s put down to an imaginary conspiring elite that will inevitably win regardless of what you do. Truly nonsense.

That might have been true in the stone age but its far from true in the 21^st Century. In reality, and on average, individual citizens have more choice than they have ever had. I say “on average” because there’s a billion people in the world who still live on the breadline.

Anyway, my point is that putting-off environmental measure is foolish. I’m reacting to a Conservative Energy Minister, has said that the UK government will “max out” remaining reserves of North Sea oil and gas[2]. I’s almost as if the Minister thinks this has no impact. That’s other than short-term political gain amongst climate sceptics and right-wing newspaper owners.

If the target for Net Zero is – yes but not yet – there’s virtually no hope of achieving the goal. Events being what they are there will never be a perfect time to stop using fossil fuels. I’m in agreement that the rundown of fossil fuel use should be graduated. However, putting off real change doesn’t make change easier. In fact, it makes change harder.

In the run-up to a UK General Election the possibilities for policies of self-harm are all too evident. A Conservative Government desperate to cling on to power will wriggle and produce contorted justifications for delay. It’s a basic instinct.

I’m not saying that we should all become zealous exponent of hairshirt policies. What is desperate is that we don’t become side-tracked from practical measures that can be practically taken. Taken now.

Work as though everything depended on you, and the choices you make. That needs to be true of Government Ministers as much as every one of us[3].

[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/populism-definition-and-examples-4121051

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/407b834e-a503-4de9-acab-fcf88d76dbb3

[3] Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. Saint Augustine

Short-sighted

None of that comes cheap.

OK. Why are mini-nuclear power stations such an irrational idea? The industry is selling these untried, untested power station as completely unlike that which has gone before. A Conservative Minister has been echoing their marketing brochures.

Let me say, with power generation there are some basic realities that remain the same.

Fuel must be transported to power stations and waste must be removed from them on a regular basis. For coal, that was the reason for the sitting of large power stations in the past. For gas, there was more flexibility in location, but the costs of transportation still needed to be minimised. For such innovations as waste-to-energy plants, proximity to the source of waste presented a major problem. Neighbourhoods rarely invited these plants to be built close by.

Spreading the distribution of nuclear fuel and waste around the country doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Cost of transportation are high. Safety is paramount. Security is always a grave concern.

Now, I understand the need for limited numbers large-scale nuclear power stations. They provide a reliable base load when the renewable sources of power are not available. The wind doesn’t blow.

Although, there are a variety of different international companies in the nuclear business the notion of a “free market” in the conventional sense is not a real prospect. The investments needed to be competent and meet regulatory requirements in the nuclear business are huge. Projects are there for the long-term. A whole working career of a nuclear engineer may be locked to one technology.

Experience has shown us that a goal of zero accidents rarely delivers a reality of zero accidents. These are complex engineered systems. It doesn’t matter if they are big or small the complexities remain. Yes, safety can be managed in a safety critical industry but there had better be preparedness for worst possible outcomes[1]. With these nuclear plants decommissioning and recovery from significant incidents of contamination must be accounted for in any design, implementation, and operation. None of that comes cheap.

Overall, in Britain there are much better paths to travel than the mini-nuclear one.

It absolutely astonishes me that, given the enormous tidal range of the Severn Estuary[2] we have never captured the energy of those waters. Equality in a nation, with a coast as large as ours, we have only ever dabbled in wave power[3]. Let’s have some genuine innovation. Let’s think like the Victorians and build for the long-term.

Why are we so incredibly short-sighted in Britain?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13047267

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Barrage

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salter%27s_duck

Design

Forewarned is, fore armed.

Getting it right by design matters. If a designer gets it right, then everyone who follows gets what they expect. Why am I writing these words? Well, a dumb message has come up on my computer. What I call dumb is a message that tells me something has happened but gives me no clue as to what to do next. It’s about as useful as a chocolate fire guard as they say.

Messages like: “Operation failed with unexpected error” in the top right of the screen are not helpful. Pop-ups like this are an indication that this is not a good design. It’s a kind of catch all statement that means we haven’t got a clue.

The usual response to such a message is to start over again in the hope that this is a one-off occurrence. So, that’s what I did. Guess what the same situation occurred. Not having a better strategy available, I did the same again. Same result. Thank you, Microsoft Teams.

While I’m on about that company another small but annoying bugbear comes to mind. Microsoft Mail works well enough. However, a forced error happens every so often. I find that I’ve deleted a message that I’d intended to flag to remind me to do something. A hunt for the message usually finds it mixed up with the pile to be deleted. When the delete button and the flag button are next to each other this error is almost inevitable. Why did the designers do this foolish thing?

I’ll not beat up on Microsoft too much, given that just about every software company has one of two of these annoyances to ruin your day. Good job my personal safety doesn’t depend on this stuff, I say. So much for commercial off the shelf software in 2023.

A video scrolled up on my iPad. It was that man who likes to take machines apart: James May. A couple of million people have viewed his video titled: “James May’s Tesla Model S has failed![1]”

It’s a good reminder that designers need to think about situations that go badly as much as they need to think about them going well. Vehicles do sit around in garages. Not everyone is used every day. It’s not the fault of the owner if they do not run the vehicle for a while.

Electrification is great when everything works. However, a simple manual reversion should be available when the electrics are not there to do their thing. Afterall, we don’t yet have a reliable battery that lasts forever. The door won’t open because the battery’s flat is as useful as the message highlighted at the start of these words.

Oversights during the engineering design process happens when the pressure is to get a product to the marketplace as quickly as possible. Maybe this is one of them to look out for in future. I will not be smug. This sort of obvious when you know it flaw is as likely to happen in aviation as it is in other industries. Forewarned is, fore armed.

There are also the wonders of feedback. Having made a design error, it’s mechanics who often uncover it, figure it out and then find a fix. This is a shout out for easy and open reporting.

[1] https://youtu.be/NsKwMryKqRE