[truemotive]

I'm really frustrated by anyone that poo-poos this specific issue. One shall absolutely fucking obsess, me for instance about the game controller they used. Look at this.

https://i.imgur.com/FrdR7TP.png

So the F710 Logitech gamepad was something I wouldn't even trust as a teenager to let me play emulated retro games accurately. It has a hardware switch to toggle between DirectInput (an ancient input technology within Microsoft stack), and XInput which is a non-trivial third-party software to map controllers to do things on your computer. Complaints range from 'the input switch was finicky and I had to tape it down' to 'you had to insert the USB dongle into the computer carefully like trying to get a Nintendo cartridge to work'. In this case, it was the main navigation control on a submersible far exceeding its safety buffer by orders of magnitude.

Sure, military applications have found use for XBox and other controllers as system inputs because generations of those serving are used to that interface. The differences are not subtle:

1. There had to be a certification process to use the controller, including risk analysis which would absolutely deny any attempt to use wireless controllers to operate any piece of equipment, no less anything that was weapon or safety critical. The military doesn't drive boats with XBox controllers.

2. XBox controllers are well designed and reliable, at an order of magnitude of this one. THEY ALSO COME IN A WIRED VERSION.

3. They decided to further mod the controller for no reason with longer sticks, maybe to make it look less like the toy it is which actually reduces the dead spot response of an analog joystick. Why? What the fuck.

The reason for the photo above is to show what I've seen in every media piece where they talk about it: It is NEVER wired in any video or photo. In one video, which I can't dig up right now, the CEO actually tosses the controller carelessly on the ground and quips that "these things are designed for 16 year olds to throw them around".

Edit: The bit mentioned above is at 0:37 in this video: https://youtu.be/ClkytJa0ghc?t=37 - "we keep a couple of spares on board just in case", that's great but I'm wondering who in that sub knows how to pair an ancient Logitech gamepad and remap XInput like a kid playing Diablo.

That is on video and a joke during the interview, forget for a second that they're using a controller from 2005-era for a moment; at that point on something like an airplane or a battleship, you just caused an incident that requires maintenance testing to make sure you didn't just disable the fucking vehicle by throwing the controls around for fun.

No. Don't disregard this specific reckless decision even though it likely had nothing to do with whatever went wrong in this situation. The CEO of the company from the get-go abandoned any semblance of basic safety in engineering, and fired/sued the guy in charge of safety when he called it out. This controller is a metaphor for something that needs to immediately be regulated so that people like this can never get away with it again.

[heavyset_go]

. Edit: The bit mentioned above is at 0:37 in this video: https://youtu.be/ClkytJa0ghc?t=37 - "we keep a couple of spares on board just in case", that's great but I'm wondering who in that sub knows how to pair an ancient Logitech gamepad and remap XInput like a kid playing Diablo.

They don't, in the BBC Travel episode "Take Me to Titanic" about this team and their sub, they did a dive with customers and almost had to abort because the controllers stopped working.

Then, when they reached the bottom of the sea, they were stuck going around in circles on the sea floor because the keymappings on the controllers stopped working. They almost had to abort the dive until someone on the surface had troubleshooted the issue and found out that the keys were incorrectly mapped to the sub's controls.

It turned out that the 'left' direction key on the gamepad actually mapped to the 'forward' motion of the submarine, and all of the gamepad controls were incorrectly mapped.

They only found out about the incorrect mapping after a dozen hours underwater and once they reached the seafloor.

It was amateur hour from the get-go.

[sfn42]

Fucking hell that's terrifying

[heavyset_go]

That's just the insanity that happened with the gamepad, the entire dive experience was littered with potential and actual emergencies that were only averted due to luck.

To find their way around, they were literally dead reckoning on the bottom of the seafloor without any navigation systems. They had no voice or video communications with their team on the surface, and they relied on that team's text messages to help them adjust their dead reckoned position.

[carbine]

Watched this too. I am alarmed by the CEO's assertion in the CBS video segment that only the hull was critical, everything else could break and you'd be safe. We know for a fact that other submersibles have gotten caught in wreckage down at the site. Being able to control your thrusters and steer could be the difference between life and death.

I'll admit I absolutely don't have this adventurous spirit, and I admire those who do. I'm sincerely praying for their successful rescue. But some of this does seem careless and possibly negligent.

[miracle2k]

> This controller is a metaphor for something that needs to immediately be regulated so that people like this can never get away with it again.

There is something to be said for protecting people who would sign up for such an experience while misjudging the risk, or assuming that some government agency does provide oversight. Though, customers seem to have been informed that this is not the case: https://twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/1671120043126423553

But apart from that, if someone wants to build a lego submarine and use it to dive to the Titanic, they should have every right to do so. It is their risk to take. Asking others to pay to join does not change this moral calculus. And yes, the people left on the surface have an ethical responsibility to not unreasonably refuse to rescue them when things to awry.

[Eisenstein]

Sorry but that doesn't work in a reasonable society. You can't let just anyone do anything they want with the repercussions being 'they don't get rescued'. A few points:

* You can't let rescue services decide who deserves to be rescued -- for so many obvious reasons it would be patronizing to list them

* People with a lot of money and no sense can fuck things up on a massive scale if we let them do whatever they wanted

* Human society is not a free-for-all. As much as the civil libertarian tendencies in me want to say 'sure, do whatever you want, just don't mess with anyone else's stuff', it really isn't that simple

Shame and societal norms are a big deal in keeping people in check. Just getting yelled at in public for doing something objectionable is enough to keep most people from spitting indoors or pissing on crowded subway platform or what-have-you.

When shame doesn't work we rely on laws. Laws must be universally enforced and they must be fairly enforced and they must be seen to be enforced.

If we allow idiots with stupid ideas to get lucky enough times then they become looked up to and the shame goes away.

To the same end if the shame doesn't stop them we need to physically stop them or take away their ability to do the societally harmful thing they want to do.

People need to re-learn that you should be embarrassed for failing when what you strove to do was stupid and destructive.

[belorn]

In the general case that is more or less accurate. There are however a bunch of exceptions in the extreme case.

Rescue services do have a point where they will decide not to continue. During the Tham Luang cave rescue (the thai football boys that got stuck in a cave) there was a period where the rescue services decided that continuing was just too dangerous. It was only because of a handful private cave divers was crazy enough to try a exceptional dangerous idea that those children got out there alive, and had it failed then those cave divers would have basically received all the blame.

The case do illustrate how far into the extreme we have to go. The local rescue services gave up and gave the job to nation service. The national service gave up and gave it to the military (with international support). The military gave up, and then through almost a backdoor, a few individuals tried a Hail Mary attempt which against all odds worked well enough to get everyone home.

There are activities where people has to accept that rescue is limited or zero. If you go hiking in no man land then there is a real risk of rescue service not being able to locate you. People who attempt sailing around the world has the risk of being "lost to sea". Cave explorers both dry and wet has to accept that rescue attempts are done based on what is feasible. Same goes for wreck divers.

We could argue that those risky activities should be illegal (or shamed), but the counter argument is that a lot of activities are just inherently risky. Sports generate a huge amount of injuries. Motorcycles are viewed by health professionals as organ donor generators. Extreme sports are extreme, but they tend to also follow more rigorous training and certification in order to address those risk.

[Eisenstein]

> We could argue that those risky activities should be illegal (or shamed), but the counter argument is that a lot of activities are just inherently risky.

There are always going to be distinctions. We allow motorcycles but we don't allow motorized wheelbarrows, or unicycles that can go 60mph. Why? History and tradition, practicality -- whatever the reason, it doesn't necessarily have to make sense and it surely wasn't designed that way. No one makes the standards to which we hold people -- but we are allowed to complain when we don't feel they are in line with a healthy society.

[CamperBob2]

motorized wheelbarrows

I've heard dumber ideas, such as....

unicycles that can go 60mph

A hand-guided mecha-wheelbarrow would be incredibly helpful for people who would like to do more of their own gardening and landscaping but who don't have the physique for it. I'm now going to spend half a day thinking about how something like that could be built to work reliably, economically, and safely, while other people on HN have probably already spent half a day thinking about how to prohibit it.

Then, back to that unicycle thing. Your "bad ideas" make fascinating engineering challenges. Gotta give credit where it's due.

[Eisenstein]

You obviously weren't paying attention to anything I wrote besides looking for things to criticize. I was saying that those things are all bad ideas but we allow some and not others for reasons that go beyond 'bad' and it is not for us to judge or change.

[CamperBob2]

I suspect this loss will be as effective as any regulation. Nobody will get on board one of these subs without doing a lot more due diligence than the present customers did. And if they do, well, that's on them.

Believe it or not, new laws aren't always the answer. You can't bubble-wrap the world and you will make it a worse place for everyone if you try.

[Eisenstein]

I didn't say anything about making new laws. I am proposing that our society is heading in the wrong direction by lionizing people who take stupid risks and win.

[CamperBob2]

Yeah, I'm mostly addressing truemotive's knee-jerk post above.

Let's at least wait for the failure analysis reports before calling for congressional hearings. In other words, don't send a lawyer to do an engineer's job.

[MockObject]

Life is becoming very safe, but we evolved under conditions of deadly risks around every corner. What we can and should ask is that the risk takers only jeopardize their own lives.

[darkerside]

This is the wisest comment I've read in a while. Trump, depending on your politics, is either the beginning or end state of that particular problem.

[civilitty]

That’s nonsense. “Reasonable society” has been building and using commercial submersibles going on nearly a century and suddenly, after less than half a dozen people die in a dumb vanity stunt, we suddenly need to create a suite of brand new regulations? Our legislators and regulators have much better things to spend their bandwidth on.

What’s next? Are we going to start patrolling for DSVUIs, breathalyzing submarine captains at random?

[Eisenstein]

> What’s next? Are we going to start patrolling for DSVUIs, breathalyzing submarine captains at random?

Are you saying that commercial marine pilots should not be held to be sober when operating a passenger carrying vessel?

[civilitty]

I'm saying it can be enforced the same way it is in most industries that rely on dangerous equipment: via insurance policies, civil lawsuit, and criminal prosecution for negligence.

We don't breathalyze pilots when they board the plane, despite them being responsible for hundreds of people at a time, and millions of flights complete every year just fine.

[Eisenstein]

No one suggested doing mandatory DUI checks except you, in order that you can argue against regulation. Regulation is requiring the pilot to be sober. Mandatory breathalyzer checking would be an example of a type of enforcement (which no one is arguing for).

[mrweasel]

Just watched the video in the Twitter post... What's the point of diving to the Titanic if all you have to observe it is that tiny window?

[danbruc]

They decided to further mod the controller for no reason with longer sticks, maybe to make it look less like the toy it is which actually reduces the dead spot response of an analog joystick. Why? What the fuck.

I would assume to allow more precise control - longer sticks will give you a smaller input for the same amount of travel and require more travel to achieve the same input.

[truemotive]

No, otherwise every controller since N64 would have had Atari 2600-sized 3” joysticks.

[bamfly]

Yeah, I don't get the "eh, it's not that big a deal" reaction.

That it was a game controller? OK, not necessarily a big deal. Hopefully they'd take two of them just in case, even with a high-quality game controller, but still, might be OK.

That it was a game controller not from one of the major console manufacturers? And a cheap one, at that? I can only assume people not taking that as a serious WTF haven't used many of those lately (by which I mean in the last 15+ years). If you buy from any but a handful of trusted brands, these days—and Logitech ain't one of them, it's almost, but not quite, entirely the three console manufacturers, and the exceptions are not cheap—you can expect the device to suck from day 1 and to die completely within a year, even if subjected to no abuse. You may luck out and it won't, but if you deviate from that guidance, you're very likely buying garbage unsuited even to home use.

If someone told me they bought a $30 Logitech controller for their Playstation emulator box, I'd tell them to buy a Playstation or XBox controller instead when it breaks.

[TheCondor]

>> This controller is a metaphor for something

This all will be better discussed after the recovery or memorials or whatever (Godspeed to them, I honestly hope for a miracle)

This metaphor is extremely double edged, especially in Silicon Valley ethos. When it fails, everyone piles on about the game controller and the lack of ‘flight worthiness.’ When it works they are lauded as heroes because of the extreme savings of using proven COTS products. The drone pilots are a great example, some officer got a nutty idea to try a game controller as his command had “more experience” with them and their success rates improved; now we are talking about it.

Space and the deep sea are the extreme limits, I think ‘regulation’ is really difficult because it is risky no matter who does it. In a way, this is the ultimate regulation that is going on here. And we still don’t know what happened or what could have failed yet.

[some_random]

When (most) people talk about the shitty controller, the options in their heads aren't "3rd party Logitech" or "$10,000 bespoke controller". They're "$200 elite OEM controller", "$60 standard OEM controller" or "$30 notoriously bad piece of shit Logitech".

[reddit_refugee3]

>Space and the deep sea are the extreme limits, I think ‘regulation’ is really difficult because it is risky no matter who does it.

But this is why regulations exist in the first place. That's like saying we shouldn't regulate surgery, because it's always risky.

We should require certain credentials and safety measures for people who want to take civilians to the ocean floor in a tiny sub. I don't think that should be a controversial take.

The onus to make sure that a service they are going to use isn't any more dangerous than it has to be, shouldn't be on the consumer. I don't want to live in a society that thinks it's acceptable to hand-wave death and suffering away as if human lives are acceptable collateral in the "free market" correcting itself.

Customers would still understand that the thing they're going to do is super dangerous, but they should be able to rest easy knowing that the company they're using for this meets some minimal level of safety.

[carbine]

Regulation in areas of extreme innovation is by definition difficult. When you have people onboard any space or deep sea craft, you do have some level of moral obligation.

Whatever you feel about Elon Musk, I appreciate his distinction in approach between crewed and un-crewed craft at SpaceX. I'm paraphrasing but he has said that when something is uncrewed, you can push it to the limit over and over again to push the technology fwd. But the second you have people on board (i.e. Crew Dragon), the margin for error goes down to zero. There are unavoidable risks, but you want to be damn sure you've minimized the avoidable ones. So you can be both -- a fast moving startup, and a "safe" organization.

Obv we still know so little about the Titan, but what upsets me is that the 'uncrewed' extreme testing does not (afaik) seem to have been particularly rigorous.

[VilleOr]

If I see correctly, the base of the screen is screwed to the hull? At least there is now less than the advertised 12.7 cm of carbon fibre composite at that point.

[jakemoshenko]

This picture shown down-thread looks like the inner chamber is not part of the outer hull: https://i.imgur.com/lBWlh3i.png

[Sprint9935]

I had a similar thought. When I saw the monitors, I thought "How are they mounted to the hull? They wouldn't screw them into it...." well, it turns out they did.

[hef19898]

Which is a bad idea in any sense. But then, looking at the pictures, I wouldn't dive deeper than a bathtub in that thing, even if I was paid 250k to do so. It looks like a carbon fiber tube with some clued on cameras, lights, propulsion and balast. Which is far, far from being a properly designed and engineered sub. Or boat. Or piece of furniture...

[raphman]

It seems your comment is missing a part: There's only one list item - which is truncated:

> 1. There had to be a certification process to use the controller, including risk analysis which would absolutely deny any attempt to

[truemotive]

Fixed, thanks. I've had a lot of thoughts about this lately. Here's another fun fact: What's wrong with this picture taken while the submersible is out of operation?

https://i.imgur.com/lBWlh3i.png

Answer: Look underneath the floor. The Altec Lansing ACS33 PowerCube 2.1 speaker system. $35 used on eBay and again from early 2000s era. -> https://i.imgur.com/fVdQ9Pc.png

Not safety critical, but so extremely indicative of how careless every element of this thing was handled before they started putting rich people in it and sending them 2.5mi underwater. It's as if they put it together by raiding my basement when I was in high school. Unbelievable.

[johnwalkr]

Wow that's bad. Every new detail looks like something out of an undergrad project. It works to hack something like that together as a first prototype, but even a masters student in a decent lab with decent mentors can make something much more professional. It's like they must have actively prevented anyone with any professional experience whatsoever from seeing it.

[heavyset_go]

It's likely that anyone with experience immediately walked away from the project when they saw what was going on. Who would want the reputation hit, the liabilities and the blood on their hands when things went wrong?

[rightbyte]

I think they did sue some former employee that was publicly calling out some stress detail about some window. So experienced employees did not only walk away but sounded the alarm on the way out.

It has to be hard for non-technical passagerare to judge these things, like the pre-tour disclaimer contract stating risks. I mean almost every house in CA tells you it will give you cancer.

[HWR_14]

Their customers want an adventure. Making it look like it was put together in a basement probably increases the value to their customers, compared to a 17-speaker Bose system. Of course, you would want it to look cheap but be expensive and safe.

[arethuza]

Please tell me that's a training simulator and not the real submersible???