this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
179 points (98.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35882 readers
1481 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires' son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).

They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They've been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they'll make it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly, this case is somewhat extraordinary, in a deeply disturbing way.

First there was this amazing quote from the CEO who is missing on the craft right now

"You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste," Rush told CBS' David Pogue during an episode of his "Unsung Science" podcast. "I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question."

Second, aside from being made from questionable experimental materials, the sub was being controlled by an old, off brand xbox controller. There were numerous design and safety issues that were known at the time of departure. They kinda just did whatever in the F they wanted to. It's a millionaire game of Fuck Around and Find Out and they're not used to finding out.

Third, the damage waiver

The disclaimer, read out by CBS correspondent David Pogue, read: “This experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.”

A nervous-looking Pogue makes a face and says, “Where do I sign?” in the footage recorded when he went on the $250,000 (£195,000) trip to see the Titanic at the end of last year.

I get that it's just some rich idiots (and one of their kids) crossing the river styx, but it's not very often you see such amazing disregard for basic safety.

[–] Cynosure@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't get why the Logitech controller is so focused on. I get that it's probably not the right controller due to it's age and wireless only nature but COTS parts are often more reliable than in-house ones. The lack of certification as you mentioned is a much larger issue.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Any game controller, would be insufficient to put 5 peoples lives in danger.

If you were going to use a game controller to do so anyway, you'd use one that can be easily replaced, maybe something manufactured in the past decade. That F710 is old (2011) and honestly didn't rate all that well compared to other controllers of it's time. It's wireless, adding needless risk.

The certification is all part of it. The control systems need to have backups. The gamepad aspect is interesting because it's blatantly spitting in the face of safety which seemed to be the CEO's style anyway.

Would it have been better than a new xbox controller? I'm not sure, perhaps not if it the new one was at least wired.

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

dear God just think if the part that failed was the controllers batteries

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't trust that controller for a dungeon run in the Elder Scrolls Online and here's this dude visiting the Titanic in person with one. They did say he has backups on board, though.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I just ... can't

[–] Otakeb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I work on robotics and drones for the military and we use game controllers for teleoperation all the time. There are some times we use more rugged and robust controllers, but they are essentially just expensive, yellow Playstation controllers with e-stop buttons on the bottom (look up Fort robotics controller).

I think you'd be surprised at how often the military uses game controllers for mission critical tech. The convergent design of game controllers has kind of solved the problem of minimal, handheld, input-output machines that are capable of commanding difficult procedures.

[–] Dexies@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do you think it’s fun killing people and pretending it’s a video game?

[–] SomethingBurger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

What? They don't pretend it's a game, they just use game controllers. Killing people is the game for them.

[–] Otakeb@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't operate anything in the field but I design and build the stuff. Fortunately, I haven't had to build any weapon systems or combat vehicles yet because I also have some moral apprehension to that as well, but I try not to shame those who do work on that stuff if I can avoid it. It's a pretty standard meme that wide-eyed aerospace engineers with dreams of space travel get stuck designing missiles to pay the bills. I'm sure there's not that many engineers in weapons tech that wouldn't switch to rockets or self driving cars in a heartbeat if they could afford to and had an in.

[–] Dexies@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey I appreciate the honest response. I was being a bit of a dick and I feel bad now. Peace.

[–] Otakeb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No it's okay. I completely understand the sentiment and it's the reason I tried my damnedest to avoid defense entirely in my job search, but with my skillset and the absolute cutthroat competitiveness of the space exploration industry, I had to broaden my search eventually. A lot of people that design the death machines also have similar reservations (I have met some that think explosions and death are cool but they are the minority...), but it's usually those far outside the industry that hold such vitriol to those that work in the military industrial complex.

The problem isn't the people, it's the system and I try to remind people that when I see them attack me or others for working in defense (hopefully I can transfer out to space flight soon). Be mad at your representatives and politicians for voting for the ever expanding defense budget. Be mad at the CEOs and shareholder boards that push war for their war profiteering. Be mad at capitalism that forces the labourers into jobs they'd rather not have. Don't be mad at the 23 year old fresh engineering grad that couldn't land the job at NASA and Raytheon handed them a fat check to pay their loans back with.

[–] Shell@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wait, so they've done this dive before? For some reason I thought it was the first time