Tag: Failure

Ohio Train Disaster

Car inspections have experienced some of the biggest cuts. Norfolk Southern management has gradually reduced the amount of time workers are allowed to spend inspecting trains for defects before they leave rail yards. About seven years ago, according to Motherboard’s previous reporting and confirmed by Whitaker, management set a recommendation that workers spend no more than two and a half minutes per car. In recent years, that time limit has dwindled to less than 90 seconds per car—not enough time, workers say, to actually inspect anything, when cars can be up to 100 feet in length. Norfolk Southern did not answer Motherboard’s question about the issue of car inspections in its response.

Because of staff cuts, workers who used to inspect hundreds of cars a day now have to inspect a thousand or more, according to multiple Norfolk Southern employees Motherboard interviewed in 2021. They said that managers will pressure workers not to report safety defects they discover, because fixing them will hurt PSR metrics such as the amount of time trains spend in the terminal, which, under PSR’s philosophy, is supposed to be as little as possible. But, if they don’t report a defect and something catastrophic happens on the rails, workers feel vulnerable, believing the company will try to pin responsibility on individual workers not following official protocol. As a result, workers feel they operate under two different, often contradictory rulebooks, one official to maintain a pretense of safety and one unofficial intended to keep trains moving. In this sense, one mechanic who worked for Norfolk Southern for 13 years, told Motherboard that workers can “kind of be screwed one way or the other.”

‘32 Nasty:’ Rail Workers Say They Knew the Train That Derailed in East Palestine Was Dangerous
A freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed 50 miles outside Pittsburgh, forced thousands to evacuate, and created a toxic cloud. Workers knew the train had safety issues.
VICE
Aaron Gordon

Software Problems and Flight Delays

Southwest’s Debacle, Which Stranded Thousands, to Be Felt for Days
Bad winter weather led the company to cancel more than 60 percent of its flights for Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving many travelers frustrated.
NYTIMES

Union leaders said a main cause of Southwest’s problems was inadequate computer systems that they said had failed to efficiently match crews with flights when cancellations started to accumulate. “They had committed to us that they have spent time and money on the infrastructure, but it has not been enough,” said Ms. Montgomery, the union leader. “The house of cards has fallen.”

Analysts also said Southwest had been slow to introduce new systems that would help it run its business. “Southwest has never viewed technology as a strategic priority,” Mr. Harteveldt said.

from reddit:
hiph0pan0nymus
What software does SWA scheduling use? CrewTrac?

flyingcircusdog
Apparently it’s a single excel sheet on a Windows 95 pc.

tostilocos
Have they tried rebooting it?

Geo-Nerd
By shutting down 90% of the flights for two days, that is essentially what they are doing.

Software Development Failure Rates

In 2008, IBM reported that 60% of IT projects fail. In 2009, ZDNet reported that 68% of software projects fail.

By 2018, Information Age reported that number had worsened to 71% of software projects being considered failures. Deloitte characterized our failure rate as “appalling.” It warns that 75% of Enterprise Resource Planning projects fail, and Smart Insights reveals that 84% of digital transformation projects fail.

In 2017 Tech Republic reported that big data projects fail 85% of the time.

According to McKinsey, 17% of the time, IT projects go so badly that they threaten the company’s very existence.

Hewitt, Eben. Semantic Software Design

Ode to Failure – Allen Ginsberg

Many prophets have failed, their voices silent ghost-shouts in basements nobody heard
dusty laughter in family attics nor glanced them on park benches weeping with relief under empty sky

Walt Whitman viva’d local losers — courage to Fat Ladies in the Freak Show!
nervous prisoners whose mustached lips dripped sweat on chow lines —

Mayakovsky cried, Then die! my verse, die like the workers’ rank & file fusilladed in Petersburg!

Prospero burned his Power books & plummeted his magic wand to the bottom of dragon seas

Alexander the Great failed to find more worlds to conquer!

O Failure I chant your terrifying name, accept me your 54 years old Prophet
epicking Eternal Flop!

I join your Pantheon of mortal bards, & hasten this ode with high blood pressure rushing to the top of my skull as I if I wouldn’t last another minute, like the Dying Gaul! to You, Lord of blind Monet, deaf Beethoven, armless Venus de Milo, headless Winged Victory!

I failed to sleep with every bearded rosy-cheeked boy I jacked off over

My tirades destroyed no Intellectual Unions of KGB & CIA in turtlenecks & underpants, their woolen suits and tweeds

I never dissolved Plutonium or dismantled the nuclear Bomb before my skull lost hair

I have not yet stopped the Armies of entire Mankind in their march toward World War III

I never got to Heaven, Nirvana, X, Whatchamacallit, I never left Earth,

I never learned to die.
Allen Ginsberg