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

381–390 of 1001 posts

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

#381

Post by craftsman »

javajosh wrote: post #356
proggy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to. Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-…

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to t…

As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that every individual would review and approve every detail of every endeavor that they personally undertake. But that's just not how the world works. There are plenty of everyday people who want to attempt very reasonable and achievably safe things. You can stop people from taking advantage of others, and if there's any constant in history, it is that there are plenty of profit-seekers who will attempt to rip off other people, and we can eliminate a good number of these circumstances, and I think this is a good idea. To get it you need a reasonable society in which checks and balances exist, and it's a society which largely already exists in large parts of the world and has not gotten out of hand.

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

#382

Post by topspin »

thepasswordis wrote: post #270

I am blown away that there is any overlap between HN readers and people getting gotten by this clickbait. The controller is sending control signals to the computer which controls the motors. The controller itself is basically irrelevant . It’s not actually doing the control, the motor controllers are. Using off the shelf stuff like this is also common since it’s extremely well tested and usually very physically robus…

> since it’s extremely well tested

Logitech tests products under these conditions? Sea water?

I've had considerable experience with Logitech products and I can't imagine employing a consumer grade Logitech controller for any life-critical purpose. It's built-to-a-price e-waste from which you hope to get a couple years of service under near ideal indoor residential conditions.

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

#383

Post by nraynaud »

javajosh wrote: post #356
proggy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to. Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-…

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to t…

There is a bit of a giant ominous nanny: insurance companies create a lot of the procedures that are practiced around us. And in a world of passing the buck, a lot of people want to insure their civil liabilities, so now our world is directed by people in suits working in high rises.

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

#384

Post by detourdog »

Aeolun wrote: post #365
javajosh wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to t…

You’d expect companies that sell these kinds of tours for 250k a pop to be vetted though? If it’s uncle bob in his garage I’d be fine with lack of regulation, but when he starts commercially selling his trips he’d need to pass safety standards.

He is not selling the trips they are paying to be crew. This is such a needless story.

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

#385

Post by porknubbins »

This move fast and break things approach to engineering seems like a Hollywood influenced dumb person’s idea of a smart person. Real engineers are slow and conservative because they are aware of various unknowns and probabilities of things failing. Before I studied engineering I saw the world in kind of binary works/broken plug and play terms. While real engineers are able to think below this abstraction to various wires, forces, resistances failing even if they usually work at a higher level. I can tell from the video this subs creators are unserious.

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

#386

Post by Dork1234 »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #271
dragontamer wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers Video game gamepads are probably some of the most well designed pieces of equipment I know of, with each part having a guaranteed lifetime of clicks and/or swipes, and other such details. Video gamers are really obsessive over these details. It wouldn't be surprising to me if the latest hall-effect sen…

> The top end joysticks used in video game tournaments for maximum reliability are easily $200+. Not the $30 Logitech controller, ever heard of joystick drift? plastic is plastic, imagine you in a mission, and your joystick starts to drift

or you are feet away from 50 foot section of the rusted Titanic and you drift into causing it to crash on top of your sub, or worst cracking the front window barely rated for 1/4 of the depth you are at.

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

#387

Post by Dork1234 »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #169
WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers We all know how the military ends up using these consumer grade products; lobbying, aka deep state corruption "if that happens in…

> Consumer grade products aren't built to last, they are built to be cheap so they can sell them to actual consumers They are so cheap you can carry a lot of spares. Controllers get pretty well abused by gamers, so they aren't exactly fragile.

Google F170 repair videos, there seems to be a lot of issues with this controller.

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

#388

Post by kevinpet »

Aeolun wrote: post #370
hunson_abadeer wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so, but it's easy to say this after the fact. When kludges like this work, we admire "scrappy" and "ingenious" engineers who are finding ways to launch rockets or build submarines or medical devices or whatever for fraction the price. It's only when it blows up that it turns from "ingenuity" into "amateur hour". People who participated in this knew the risks. They fucked up. None of us would have designed a bet…

> None of us would have designed a better submarine I dunno. I would never go with wireless over cabled, certainly not as my primary steering method, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the only method onboard to control the thing. Maybe it’s better if these things are build by paranoid instead of adventurous people?

You can have safety, or you can have a submarine tourism startup. You can't have a submarine tourism startup staffed by cautious risk averse people.

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

#389

Post by venusenvy47 »

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.

All those items you list are operated inside national boundaries and can be regulated. I think they only operate in international waters specifically to avoid regulations.

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

#390

Post by windowshopping »

Can anyone who knows something about this industry answer a question?

I know nothing about it and I was surprised to read about this situation because I would have assumed a submersible would be in fairly constant sonar contact with its surface vessel. I would've thought it would be followed a rigidly planned route and its location relative to the surface ship would be well understood at all times, i.e. "you are 3508.3m below us, 340m east, 233.1m south."

How does a submersible "get lost"?

Post reply on HN