Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#311

Post by jojobas »

cpleppert wrote: post #179
srmarm wrote: post #3

The US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller in active service [0] Mass market has a lot of R&D to leverage so it makes sense. Nothing to say this is the cause of the fault and probably going to be more reliable than something hand rolled. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/19/16333376/us-navy-military...

The Xbox controllers are used to control the periscope which is not a safety critical device. Regardless, the navy uses wired controllers and did extensive testing and verification. This outfit didn't do anything like that; in one video with a journalist the bluetooth controller was a 'feature' because they could pass it around the sub.

The periscope is a combat critical device, lose control of it and the enemy will see you first and you're dead.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#312

Post by ramesh31 »

IceHegel wrote: post #283
medellin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you take the move fast and break things culture to anything where people die when things break. Really just sad and so stupid.

It’s sad of course, but the early days of flight were also quite dangerous but they lead to rapid innovation and the stable industry of today. It’s a tragedy, but high risk activities are by definition going to have a few.

>It’s sad of course, but the early days of flight were also quite dangerous but they lead to rapid innovation and the stable industry of today.

And if you tried to take paid passengers on a homebuilt uncertified aircraft today you would go to jail. This isn't the early days. The challenger deep was reached over 60 years ago. We've been building submarines longer than airplanes. We know how to do this stuff safely. This was negligence.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#313

Post by afavour »

analog31 wrote: post #173
Karupan wrote: post #165

According to the NYTimes, OceanGate refused to undergo any sort of external audit/certification process [0]. I would imagine using an off the shelf, cheap controller would have been one of the first things to be flagged. Makes you wonder how many other critical components did they skimp on [0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/20/us/titanic-missing-s...

This is what actually amazes me. The reliability of something like an airplane, bus, or train, is held to extremely high engineering standards. There are even safety rules for bicycles. But you're allowed to take people for rides in a submarines with barely any oversight.

What international safety standards apply to bicycles? Seems to me that if you’re way out in international waters it’s not too surprising that no one is going to step in to stop you doing something this stupid. There’s not much jurisdiction.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#314

Post by Accujack »

mey wrote: post #231
EddieJLSH wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US UAV/Drones use xbox controllers too

There was video floating around of a machine gun turret being remote controlled using the Valve Steamdeck in Ukraine. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/steam-deck-controls-a-real... Edit: consumer joysticks normally use potentiometers, which aren't great for deadzones/drift. For things like dust incursion reasons along it would make sense for any industrial/military device to be using hall effect based joysticks.

The more modern ones use hall sensor based sticks. Most new RC transmitter designs have 'em.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#315

Post by StillBored »

A lot of people going on about the game controller, which itself wouldn't bother me if there was a direct connection way to control it too (aka via the touchscreens).

What bothers me more and is clear as day in those pictures are things like the screws into the carbon fiber pressure hull holding the screens up. There was someone (ex test engineer?) on reddit yesterday talking about a few things, but what really stuck out was how he mentioned there were a lot of questionable decisions being made that made him nop out of the project. And others mentioning simple things like painting it orange so it can be found on the surface easier were simply not being done.

So, while its possible the surface ship didn't have a sensitive hydrophone recording the dive, which seems almost impossible so i'm going to assume it does, everyone seems focused on how they should be able to hear it implode. Meaning it is drifting about somewhere...

But, I wonder, it seems quite possible to me that the thing simply sprung a leak, and flooded out in a matter of seconds rather than imploding. Once that happened none of the fail safes to surface would work because its likely not buoyant enough once full of water. A microscopic pinhole would probably ablate really fast, but would be completely unstoppable.

Given the hull is only 5" thick, even a 1/2" screw on the inside would be a significant percentage of the way through already.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#317

Post by netsharc »

PokemonNoGo wrote: post #94
TillE wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People - including politicians - have said for many years that the BBC should sell iPlayer subscriptions to international viewers, but they just...don't. They also have a massive archive of beloved content, enough to be a first-class streaming platform, but that stuff's not available even to UK residents.

Probably because with their current scheme they liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? As well as their co-funding/producing of foreign material. The question I would as as a liscense payer is what they earn through this. Not saying it's not possible but why it is quite the hard thing to get out of, and not spend liscens money while doing so, makes sense. I would…

The car show Top Gear had (maybe still has?) great music because the BBC has a license to almost any piece of music (since they have several radio channels in the UK, a musician would be insane to refuse a license to the BBC), but the DVD version sold internationally would replace the music with something generic, I'm guessing it's the same with the version broadcast internationally.

When the trio that made Too Gear a huge show moved to Amazon's Grand Tour, one of the things that suffered was the music, because I guess Amazon didn't want to bother getting licenses to broadcast music in many many countries.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#318

Post by stringfood »

gcanyon wrote: post #166

The more I read about this, the more it (sadly) reminds me of a bungie jumping accident years ago: the bungie cable contained many separate strands, all ending in loops. The habit of the operators was to hold all the loops together and pass a large carabiner through the bundle, catching a number of the loops. Until one time they caught few enough (none? I remember "none," but that seems absurd) that the whole thing f…

[dead]

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#319

Post by jrockway »

sschueller wrote: post #29

From what I read it is also the first carbon fiber deep water vessel. I find that scary as carbon fiber does not start to bend before falure, it fails catastrophically.

Realistically, aluminum and steel can fail in a similar manner. There was a lot of FUD when carbon fiber bikes came out that they can fail randomly after a crash that is apparently fine, but basically the aluminum bikes they replaced also failed like that.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#320

Post by netsharc »

dave333 wrote: post #297
PokemonNoGo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because with their current scheme they liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? As well as their co-funding/producing of foreign material. The question I would as as a liscense payer is what they earn through this. Not saying it's not possible but why it is quite the hard thing to get out of, and not spend liscens money while doing so, makes sense. I would…

BBC should put its entire archive free online ad supported for international users and ad free for UK viewers. Then the popular items could migrate behind a premium paywall over time.

Grandparent poster just responded why it's not that easy, and your demand is to ask for the thing s/he just explained is hard to do..?

I know I should just leave these sort of replies alone rather than say "WTF?", but WTF, dude?

Post reply on HN