Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | more whatscooking's commentslogin

Until the stresses of life make you vulnerable, and you get depressed or anxious, start drinking heavily, start eating a terrible diet, and stop exercising, which ruins your health progress


It’s a golden age for the upper class, not your average American lol


Yeah. Almost all innovation and economic improvement has only helped the upper classes and in many cases actually hurt the lower classes.

What is going to happen in America is a 40 year life expectancy gap between the rich and the poor. Rich kids will grow to 6'5" with 180 IQs and end any economic opportunity for poor families.


> Yeah. Almost all innovation and economic improvement has only helped the upper classes and in many cases actually hurt the lower classes.

When my parents were born, something like 30-60% of the homes in their states didn't have indoor plumbing.


I meant to add "in the last 20-30 years".


Back in the 1980's only the rich had mobile phones.


Well, that's over 30 years, but yes, I think we can come up with examples. Broadband, videocalls, "free" (bundled, unlimited) long distance.

I remember when I first started seeing people with broken ankles/feet using those one-leg scooters. It took us until the 2000s to think of that!


It was a golden age for the french aristocracy for awhile there too.


Well it is the New York Times.

Everything they post that is of the "the new trend" schtick is things happening to young rich white couples that live in Manhattan.

To be fair... Those are the people that read them.


Most old engineers I’ve worked with are terrible and many younger ones are way more talented.


This is the attitude you need to give birth to truly innovative ideas like a Bluetooth controller attached to the desktop PC that controlled his hunk of shit submarine that killed everyone on board.

He proudly describes it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClkytJa0ghc


I do agree with you, though I think BT game controller wasn't a bad idea for two reasons:

- Battle-tested and easily replaceable, compared to a custom one.

- Cables have a snapping risk in that limited physical space, Bluetooth solves it and there's no risk of EMI 4km underwater anyway.

The carbonfiber structure... that's another story. Terrible.


Bluetooth as the only means of control of a sub that would most definitely kill you if it loses control? The same battle tested Bluetooth that still can't reliably connect to the exact same device despite having done so all the time? The same Bluetooth that disconnects if I were to turn on 2 more Bluetooth devices due to interference?

How about the batteries that are required to power a wireless controller? Everything on a patchwork sub needs to be at least n+2 across failure domains. I wouldn't have gone in that sub even with n+5 and a paycheck TBH.

How much money was he trying to save here? Competitive gamers with a way lower net worth stick to tethered controllers for a reason, low latency and reliable connection.

Furthermore, I can believe a bunch of b/millionaires being duped into paying a non-refundable $250k. But I am struggling with the fact that they saw the abyssal porta potty and the BT controller, and still thought it was wise to enter.

The best case scenario here was an 8 hour trip in a space that's worse than long haul Economy to see Titanic ruins on a TV screen. I really don't get the value proposition here.

That poor kid.


The other major issue with the controller is that it is not designed for a marine environment -- the water, salt exposure, and humidity inside the sub. Surely there are off-the-shelf marine controllers that are better suited.


It's simply not fit for the purpose. The ocean floor is an incredibly inhospitable place. This is safety critical. It's like performing surgery in a hospital setting with a pocket knife to cut costs. Though if fate hadn't already killed them by now, I'm sure the cavalier "who wants to drive?" passing the controller around the cabin would have gotten them snagged on the wreckage in due time. (Remember the Russian jet that crashed when the captain turned the controls over to his kids?) I am consumed by this story and how every new detail revealed seems more and more insane.


The Logitech F710 was not a "battle-tested" controller, it's a cheap third party controller of inferior quality. The official Microsoft controllers have serious R&D behind them, but not the Logitech ones.


Logitech is a reputable brand making reliable components, not like those Chinese weird brands.

It is battle tested by being used by so many people around the world.

I don't understand what you imply by "3rd party". 3rd party in relation to what exactly in this context?


In gaming, 3rd party accessories are ones nit made by the manufacturer of the game system. The first party is the console manufacturer (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) and the second party is the end user.

Logitech makes some great mice but their game controllers are notoriously poor quality for the price, especially since the first party controllers aren't much more expensive.

Some of the "weird brand" gamepads like 8bitdo are considered better than Logitech or even Nintendo!


third party doesn't mean anything if you're not controlling a first party device


He's right on the cheap part though, I had that controller and it will sometimes looks connection, making you spin around as if you kept the joystick in position. I threw that thing away..


It's not battle tested.

The navy uses the standard actually battle tested xbox controller and the logitech one has many 1 star reviews on amazon, enough said.

You can literally search on google and see this in 5 seconds, it's bizarre that it keeps being spouted in some posts, almost makes me a bit suspicious because it's so dumb.


  - Cables have a snapping risk in that limited physical space, Bluetooth solves it and there's no risk of EMI 4km underwater anyway.
Cables can easily be made practically 'unsnappable' in this context

Controls could also be mounted directly to a fixed panel, as is the case in most (all?) other submarines

My engineer brain says that moving from 'wired' to 'bluetooth' for a safety-critical connection is pure lunacy. I don't think any objective appraisal could reasonably conclude that this decreased risk or increased safety. Bluetooth is not even close to reliable enough for this application, and neither is any other wireless technology as far as I know


Does he ever explain why carbon fiber and bluetooth were improvements over working technology?


I read somewhere that by reducing the weight of the hull, it eliminated the need for the expensive tooling traditionally needed on the mothership to hoist the vessel in and out of the water. This was key to the business model of his shoestring budget amusement park ride to the bottom of the sea.


> amusement park ride

I would wager that safety is better - not least because standards are tougher - on almost every amusement ride around.


"Carnival park ride" would have been more apt. Those things aren't nearly as safe as the rides at real amusement parks.


I remember seeing a claim that the Bluetooth part was a feature since you could just "pass the controller" inside the cabin but I haven't been able to find a source for it.

As for the carbon fibre:

>OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush says the company had been evaluating the potential of using a carbon fiber composite hull since 2010, primarily because it permits creation of a pressure vessel that is naturally buoyant and, therefore, would enable OceanGate to forgo the use — and the significant expense — of syntactic foam on its exterior. So, for Cyclops 2 OceanGate decided to avoid the metallic hull altogether and began a search for a manufacturer that could help it develop a composite hull.

https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/composite-submersib...


> I remember seeing a claim that the Bluetooth part was a feature since you could just "pass the controller" inside the cabin but I haven't been able to find a source for it.

Here: https://youtu.be/ClkytJa0ghc?t=40


Thanks for the citation.

Handing the controller around smells like marketing wank, especially when you learn they bolted down the shitter and made the controls remote. Seems like an odd tradeoff. I’d be inclined to use a portable toilet or diapers and firmly attach the controls to the sub near the only window. People can still take turns.


It kind of makes sense considering the only viewport is on the opposite side of the submarine away from the PCs which interface with the controls.

Maybe the intent was for someone to peak out the window to perform a maneuver.

Still, I hope there was a wired controller as a backup just in case.


The carbon fiber obviated the need for expensive to produce syntactic foams.

The Bluetooth?

Eh. It was there.

The sad thing is, the carbon fiber hull material may not necessarily be a totally losing proposition if you can make the carbon fiber hull module swappable and recyclable, and testable.

Evidently they got, what? 20ish descents to service depth before it lost integrity?

If you worked from there, and figured out those pesky details, you could make something workable.

In fact, we may even be lauding the man if they'd done the 30 + journeys to service depth unmanned, and used the data collected from scanning/ultrasounding or otherwise probing that hull piece to draw strong, clear, unambiguous bars around "number of trips til new hull needs to be swapped in".

Nobody would fault the guy for doing that, and he may have truly advanced the State of the Art in ways he'd still be alive to enjoy.

But here we are.


Is it possible that you can keep the carbon fiber hull as a solid piece with no penetrations, making it more watertight?

I kind of envision this craft as being a sealed capsule full of humans with all the propulsion equipment and batteries strapped to the outside and controlled wirelessly from the inside. But I haven't seen a full diagram of how Oceangate worked. Like, how did CO2 get scrubbed from the cabin?


To lower costs in order to attract more billionaire customers.


The situation is quite often the exact opposite: young engineers often fail to see the big picture and don’t know how to find the adequate architecture or approach to solve a problem in a genuine way, while experienced engineers will have a natural, intuitive approach that works easily.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve looked at a project by some engineer in their 20s, and it is so over-engineered and complicated, entirely lacking in any ability to future proof against onboarding or feature development, so clever they probably are very proud of themselves, but mostly useless.


Less experienced people probably start with a design that looks like it might do what they need.Then they keep tacking on things as they hit limitations. This might be the right approach but an experienced person would know when to cut their losses and start over. A desperate newcomer would double down on adding shit leading to a convoluted complex mess.


Are you seriously trying to suggest that less experienced engineers are better than more experienced engineers?

Hubris like this will leave you joining the other ghosts floating around the wreck of the titanic shortly.


And what do you think happens to those talented young engineers when they get older? Are they no longer talented, just old?


[flagged]


What a remarkable distortion of humanity.


Your troll craft is somewhat lacking


Sounds like you need to find a better job. Good luck, with that attitude.


As someone who has lost 100lbs and kept it off for 3 years so far, this is bullshit pseudo-science


One anecdote is not proof.


What is more likely? That people have become lazy/stressed as shit and live off junk food or that genetics somehow spontaneously mutated in the last century that magically made everyone fat? It’s the environment, not the genes.


It's not a binary choice.

Over the past decades, calories have become easier to acquire, and bodies that developed over the millions of years prior that evolved in a climate of inherent calorie deficiency would naturally become fatter.

Just because you're a thoughtless wonder who has no empathy doesn't mean that genetics isn't still the primary driver here.


Have no empathy? I literally struggled with my weight for the first 25 years of my life. Then I realized that companies sell us nutritionally devoid Frankenfood that is manufactured in a lab to make you overeat and I stopped eating that crap. That’s 90%+ of food in a supermarket. Add in some daily exercise and you’re golden.


Yet another pointless anecdote that does nothing to disprove the science.

Instead of making blanket statements that cannot possibly achieve the goals you seem to set out to achieve, it would be much more effective if you were to say something like "well, my personal experience is ... " without any pretentions that you alone hold all the answers to the problems of obesity in the world.


Your “science” is an echo chamber that confirms your beliefs and emotions. The only thing that science has proved is that CICO is a reality and Twinkies light up the reward pathway in your brain the same way that cocaine does. Show me the science that shows me that a certain set of genes are associated with a weight gain of 100lbs in our population. The closest thing you’ll find is the FTO gene which only correlates with at most 10-20 pounds if you have two copies, and still, some people with that gene are incredibly slim.


Diet + Tech addiction. Where’s my Nobel prize?


As someone who graduated valedictorian but skipped more days than allowable to graduate (my parents had to fight with the district to let me graduate), there is no correlation between days attended and skill/aptitude.


So you are saying that because you, a presumably exceptional student since you mention being valedictorian, could afford to skip days at school, the same applies to average or below-average students? Could you elaborate on how you came to that conclusion?


> there is no correlation between days attended and skill/aptitude.

This may be true, but there is absolutely a correlation between days attended and amount learned.


I’d argue that there is a correlation but it stops somewhere along the skill ladder.


A single data point cannot establish or refute a correlation.


I have absolute pitch for select instruments only. For string instruments (especially for the violin which I play) you can ask me what note was played in the middle of the night and I’ll tell you exactly what it is. I can even most likely tell you which string and which position was used to play that note. But for other instruments like the piano, I can get close, but many times I’m within one or two notes. Surprisingly for wind instruments like the trumpet I also have almost as good accuracy as for the violin. Not sure why because I hardly ever heard a trumpet growing up.


A piano (usually) has three strings per note, all slightly detuned. Perhaps that throws you off. You could try to see if your pitch perception is affected when someone plays three identical notes on a violin (although I imagine that's rather difficult, so perhaps a small ensemble is better).


You do realize that Reddit runs in the negative? No chance they do this


Reddit was profitable until they hired thousands more employees for very little obvious gain.


Gotta grow fast to inflate the value to astronomical levels and then sell out. Who cares what happens after that point.


Only one person has said they run in the negatives and they’ve said it alongside a host of other lies, so please forgive the less trusting of us for not believing the serial liar.


This would not meaningfully impact profitability for Reddit, the payouts need not be “large” from Reddit’s perspective to be a substantial amount of money to individual moderators.


My thoughts exactly lol


I like how simple Firefly’s images are, like something you’d want to work with in Photoshop. Dalle-2 looks terrible. Midjourney is still my favorite.


As someone who has spent hours playing with it in Photoshop (Beta) Firefly is actually pretty damned cool!


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: