Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by truemotive 1099 days ago
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.

3 comments

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.
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?
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.

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