this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Perfect example, Skynet is an excellent engineer. Be like Skynet.
I turn 60 in June. I'm doing this with my body.
One of my favorites
I turn 42 next month, but my body is beat up from 2 decades of military service. I'm definitely experiencing some "catastrophic functionality" myself.
Can they amputate backs yet?
I've always used escalators as a great example of this. If they lose power or break they elegantly degrade back into stairs.
"Sorry for the convenience" -- Mitch Hedberg
escalators are actually a bad example of this. What you describe is what is supposed to happen, and they're supposed to be built with mechanisms to ensure that's what happens, but there's been examples of escalators failing in such a way that the weight of too many people on it makes it go faster and faster and people get crushed and deadified.
I watched a youtube video about a famous example a while back, don't remember the channel that did it though or I'd find and link it.
edit: I've been proven wrong but I'm leaving my comment because it's a learning experience for anyone who reads this thread.
Escalators have many security features and they are one of the safest modes of transportation.
Out of the tens of thousands of installed systems, there are bound to be failures of the mechanical safeties (or human-performed installation/maintenence) that can lead to a Swiss cheese path to failure. I wouldn't necessarily dismiss the whole category as a bad example because of that however.
Is it perfectly fail-safe? Well, in those cases, it wasn't. But what were the contributing factors?
I think that specific example was shown to be sabotaged at the behest of management to try to save on maintenance costs so no that doesn’t count
yup, that's the one
Well in that case it WAS built with multiple safety mechanisms and failsafes, and it was deliberate human actions that caused the catastrophy.
So escalators are a good example, human greed is the bad example.
At least someone with some sense can observe the amount of people on an elevator and nope out of that collective act of stupidity. I say that qualifies as graceful degradation.
I thought that as well, then the weight of us going up caused it to go down.
Now please learn about Progressive enhancement. If you ever do a webpage, use this.
Modern web designers: "Nope. Best I can do is 'You must enable Javascript to view this webpage.'"
It's a dark pattern to steal your data.
Its a dark pattern to make me instantly leave the web page.
Maybe sometimes, especially among the bigger and more infamously privacy-invasive sites.
A lot of the time, though, it's just that it's the easiest way to write a website. Particularly if you're using modern frameworks, you have to go quite a way out of your way to send static HTML that works well without JS enabled.
nice timing, I heard of it literally today from this Smashing Magazine article :D
Ooh, nice! Will read.
I'm reminded of the recent image of the curiosity tyre
But do you know that they can just rip off a wheel that has been damaged enough to become a burden?
Tabletop rpg design uses the term "fail gracefully" to describe being able to still function when you forget the rules.
Older games used to regularly stop amd collapse into boring chart-reading and index-looking-up. A lot of modern games are entirely playable if you forget everything except the core mechanic.
Funny that’s like nature works too. I’m dead inside and still working enough to work
Just think of the shareholder value tho
The corporations can't sell you an overpriced newer model of your old one doesn't completely die from the slightest issue.
Yeah, it's kind of the exact opposite of planned obsolescence.
The internet works this way too. Blow up one undersea cable and traffic rerouted somewhere else, but slower.
That's interesting, but I need two types of batteries to use it at full power.
a few bad years I hope that was at least partially a joke or I feel really bad for that person