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Comment by everdev | Hacker News Reader

> Following standard procedures, the night-shift supervisor posing as Pacific Command played a recorded message to the emergency workers warning them of the fake threat. The message included the phrase “Exercise, exercise, exercise.” But the message inaccurately included the phrase “This is not a drill.”

This is just a test. This is not a test.

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Seems it's still a UX problem.

UX is not limited to visual interfaces. UX in audio communication has been improved in several contexts, aviation is one of the most notable, some of the things they use:

- Standard phraseology

- Use key terms only in affirmative phrases (that is, never say "don't takeoff" but rather "keep your position")

- Disambiguate between similar terms (e.g. 'niner' instead of nine as to not confuse with 'five' as well as other reasons https://www.quora.com/In-aviation-why-is-9-pronounced-niner-... )

The worst civil air disaster happened in part because the controller said “you are not cleared for takeoff”. Alas, there was radio interference, so the “not” didn’t get through.

As a consequence, the words “cleared for takeoff” have been removed from the ATC/pilot vocabulary except when actually cleared for takeoff.

Are you talking of the Tenerife disaster in 1977? Almost correct: http://aviationknowledge.wikidot.com/aviation:tenerife-commu...

“The day shift warning officers received this recorded message on speakerphone. While other warning officers understood that this was a drill, the warning officer at the alert origination terminal claimed to believe that this was a real emergency”

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/30/581853255...

Speakerphone. That can also mean it’s automatically on. So you do something else, hear something narrated as the message and the last thing that stays in your head is clear “this is not a drill.” And you probably didn’t have to answer the call and talk to the real person. You’ve just heard “this is not a drill.” So you act as you’re trained to do.

It makes me wonder what the message is for a real emergency.

Also, the article mentions the day-shift supervisor thought the test was for the leaving night-shift operators, so he wasn't there to presumably tell his day-shift that there would be a test... but I think that this is not good for them to be warned ahead of time. You want them to be prepared to execute properly either way.

It's the same message the officer heard, just without "Exercise. Exercise. Exercise." at the start. Bad UI.

Especially since this was in Hawaii. The first message from Pearl Harbor to the fleet during the attack in 1941 was, famously,

“AIRRAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL.”

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