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[–] 167 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

Jesus Christ that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The submarine in the game Iron Lung was safer to drive than this thing.

But Wilby said that for the Titan, the coordinate data was transcribed into a notebook by hand and then entered into Excel before loading the spreadsheet into mapping software to track the sub’s position on a hand-drawn map of the wreckage.

The OceanGate team tried to perform these updates at least every five minutes, but it was a slow, manual process done while communicating with the gamepad-controlled sub via short text messages.

Updates every FIVE MINUTES?! I wouldn't even trust this thing in a damn swimming pool.

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  • [–] [S] 93 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I really do wonder why they ended up in this. It can' be that hard to make even a hacky DIY system to do it automatically. The navigation system just had to have some digital or even analog output, then it would be just the problem of interpreting the signal with some script and writing it into a file.

    When Wilby recommended the company use standard software to process ping data and plot the sub’s telemetry automatically, the response was that the company wanted to develop an in-house system, but didn’t have enough time.

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  • [–] 102 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    To write a script, you need someone who can write scripts.
    If all you have is someone who can write VLOOKUPs in Excel, and the CEO is too cheap to hire someone, then that's what you use.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I really do wonder why they ended up in this. It can’ be that hard to make even a hacky DIY system to do it automatically.

    All-manager team, no devs?

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I like how the company didn't consider using standard software to do it, and then switch to the in-house system that they made later, instead of just having it done by hand instead.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There are better ways to do that even in Excel!

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago*

    Right? I work with plenty of users in non-technical roles who have at best rudimentary Excel skills, and even they could figure out a better way to manage this. The whole thing with Excel is to make basic data work accessible even to a rube, and let them do an incredible amount of things otherwise outside their skillet.

    Using Excel like this is like giving someone a microwave and they only use it as a kitchen timer.

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    [–] 131 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    According to Ross, six days before the Titan submarine imploded, the sub’s pilot and the company’s cofounder, Stockton Rush, crashed the vessel into a launch mechanism bulkhead while the vessel was attempting to resurface from dive 87. […] but Ross said he did not know if an inspection of the sub was carried out afterward.

    How does every new detail about the excursion keep getting worse? Next week I’m going to learn they used Saran wrap for the windows.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It is my understanding that Rush also hard-bottomed the sub (crashed into the sea floor) while diving to the Andrea Doria. And was a little piss baby about it the entire time.

    That's apparently a shorter version of the video I'd seen previously; eventually Rush does hand over the controls, by throwing the playstation controller at the guy's head.

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    [–] 108 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    It's a good thing that no serious company uses excel spreadsheets to manage their data, right? Right?

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  • [–] 85 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Of course not! We employees of Fortune 500 companies use Google Sheets to manage critical data.

    It's in the cloud, that's how you know it's good.

    (I'm not even joking....our VP said this)

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Excel effectively forces cloud usage now if you want to use autosave. And frankly, Microsoft is doing everything it can to shift users to cloud based Office apps.

    They really, really want users and business owners to think of the local data storage and desktop computing as secondary to OneDrive and Webapps. I swear at some point in the future the consumer version of Windows will be little more than the Edge browser in a wig.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I just wish the whole 'cloud' thing would die in a ditch specifically for people like that.

    No, most use-cases don't need to be in a cloud.

    You are 99.9% paying more for that setup than having people who understand servers.

    And if you need the cloud, then hooray for you, but it should not need to be subsidized by thousands of small customers who jumped on the wrong train.

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Be me, postal worker. One of our machines uses a csv file to attach zip codes to bins. See fresh engineer decide to change one zip code in notepad really quick. See file's formatting get wrecked. Spend next 6 hours watching all the mail spit out of the very last bin every time they think they finally fix it as if machine has irritable bowel syndrome. Engineer earns nickname 'boy wonder' first week on job

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    This is why I always save contents as a new file instead of overwriting the original one when I'm using a machine that isn't mine. I've been burned so many times by flimsy newline characters, proper unicode support, legacy encoding and many other stuff you assume it should be already in place.

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    [–] 52 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I will never get over how much media attention this gets.

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    [+] 47 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    I have a little pet theory I've been stewing about when it comes to penny wise/pound foolish decisions from business owners of all types. From landlords, to local cafes, and all the way up to Fortune 500 CEOs. It comes down to bad accounting.

    I've taken to setting aside money into buckets. There's a bucket that handles some filter replacements for our home furnace (it's a 5 inch thick HEPA filter, so it's bit pricey) and under sink RO system, for example. When it comes time to buy one, I just pull from that bucket. It doesn't feel like I'm losing anything off my usual budget for the month. The money is just there, and it feels nice to be able to pay without worry. It almost feels like a reward for good planning.

    Companies do this, as well. In fact, I helped setup a similar system at my local community makerspace (which runs as a 501(c)3). We pay into buckets for things like insurance every month, and then we pay it when the bill comes due each year. Again, it doesn't feel like we're stressed for anything.

    Not all companies do this, or if they do, they don't do it for everything. If you're not setting aside a little bucket for something that you know will come up, then it has to be paid out of your general funds. That's money you wanted to use for something more fun than furnace filters or insurance or a software package that can process navigation data automatically.

    So when you see billionaires or landlords complain about something important being too expensive, it might be because they aren't tracking their accounting buckets properly. If this keeps happening, that's a good indication that they are anything but a glorious Captain of Industry.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    My son is kinda struggling with his allowance money. I might not be the greatest example or at least, a good financial teati him.

    But the other day, my friend told me their kids received a special wallet with envelopes inside. Exactly the kind of buket system you describe.

    So I'm going to buy this for both my kids, I think it's going to be helpful for them.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I would add to this that almost all the companies I have worked for (from local businesses to multi national corps) constantly "save" money by hiding it in labor costs. There is some line item or other thing that is clearly definable on a budget and so they will outsource it in some capacity and then pat themselves on the back for the cost savings. However, what ends up happening is the resulting product that comes in is dog shit and it forces the people on the ground to fix it or otherwise make it work.

    Most regular people just want to do their job and not rock the boat, so rather than make this new issue a pain point for management, they just deal with it. Over time those types of things start to add up and burn people out, but the higher ups are never directly effected and so I think they get a weird sense of anything they say ultimately "just working out".

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Good thing the world didn't lose anything valuable.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Man, a hand typed spreadsheet must have been hard to navigate with the PlayStation controller.

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    [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Everything I hear about this contraption is worse than I expected.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    There were so many things relating to this incident that bewildered me. The titanium end caps were stuck on using glue, by hand. Also, while carbon fiber is great at handling tensile loads at 14 PSI, it's not so great at handling compressive ones at 5500 PSI. For such a delicate mission, the whole thing seemed unprofessional in so many ways.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Supposedly the glued on titanium is the same thing the US Army does for their small Submarines, though I'm sure they found some way to cheap out/fuck up.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (4 children)
  • I know of at least a couple maintenance shops that will give their expired composite materials to a mechanic school for students to use in class projects. This usage is actually a good idea, completely unlike using it to build a manned submersible.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I don't know how these guys didn't get a Darwin award yet

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    [–] 17 points 2 years ago

    The more you hear about this sub the worse it gets.

    I'm not surprised, of course, given the shortcuts Rush was determined to take.

    Also it's the first time I saw the picture in that article of the other crushed remains. I'm pretty impressed they could get pictures that deep.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Of course it did!

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I'm ready to weep from this.

    Every time any problem comes up, my current manager insists we must use Excel to solve it.

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