• hOrni@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      What do you mean what do we need a mattress for? Why in the hell do you think we just spent all that money on the Titan? The whole point of buying a submersible in the first place is to get the ladies nice and tipsy topside, so we can take em to a nice comfortable place below the sea, and you know… they can’t refuse. Because of the implication.

          • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            Pasted the text here so no need to visit r*ddit.

            The text covered well for the software related history of Gates, but let’s also not forget the not-so-far past. Dealings with Epstein (which led to divorce with Melinda, sus?) and helping monopolize COVID vaccines come to mind first

            
            Bill Gates *has*, in fact, earned himself the "evil CEO" stereotype in the past. [Microsoft was a notorious monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft) throughout the 1990s. It was even convicted of anti-trust violation in both the US and EU; both times it paid the fine and went on being a monopoly anyway. Their OEM agreements with hardware vendors actually made it difficult to impossible to get any other operating system onto a PC.
            
            When we talk about "altruism and sustainability" applied to software, most of us should be thinking about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Starting all the way back in the 1970s with his "[open letter to hobbyists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists)," Gates carried out a decades-long vendetta against all open source software anywhere. This went beyond all common business sense into "now you're just being a dick" territory. See also the pack of frivolous lawsuits Microsoft pressed against the FOSS community and Steve Ballmer referring to FOSS as a "cancer."
            
            Generally, Bill Gates was to nerds what Joe McCarthy was to Socialists for a few decades. So he burned some very heavy bridges, even among his peers in the tech community. And BTW, Gates was born wealthy and managed to muscle Microsoft Windows onto IBM merely through family connections.
            
            NOW, in the present day, Gates has separated himself from all that and become a legendary altruist, especially contributing to fight diseases through the Gates' Foundation. Some might even say he redeemed himself. Microsoft itself buried the open source hatchet finally; partly because the desktop market is now sinking out from under them while Google has taken its place as the monopoly heavyweight.
            
            Anyway, the above is an attempt to provide some context, nothing more. I know that a portion of the public will always say "billionaire = bad!" no matter what. But it's not like you can say Gates did nothing wrong.
  • Blackmist
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    2 months ago

    Couple of billionaires die in a makeshift sub with a MadCatz controller, and they’re still investigating over a year later.

    2000 immigrants die every year crossing the Mediterranean, well who cares? They shouldn’t have been there anyway!

      • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        American schoolchildren are constantly the victims of mass shootings, and we can’t even get the police to get involved

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      2 months ago

      One event was weird, the other is normal. One group has powerful friends who can sponsor and press for investigations, the other does not.

      And so the world turns.

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Alex Trebek: The first category is “other than that, how was the parade Mrs. Kennedy”

  • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The investigation will also examine whether there is any evidence of misconduct or criminal acts in connection with the incident

    What is the legal definition of misconduct anyway?

    Given that Rush seemed to willfully ignore warnings from experts and fired people unwilling to do things like sign off on the safety of the sub I think there’s definitely a case for misconduct, at the very least.

    • Kellamity@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      There was a really good article on this and unfortunately I can’t find it now to share

      But the gist was that Titan exploited a bunch of loopholes, among other things. The paying customers on the sub were in fact ‘marine researchers’ who coincidently made a donation, and things like that

      Some of the people who were at one point involved but left due to safety concerns raised the issue with OSHA (? - or whoever the more specific body was) who repeatedly failed to investigate or take any action

      So for me, whether or not they are able to charge the company, the industry regulators and government bodies overseeing them need to face some questions and judgements too (though it would take a more knowledgeable person than me to know what exactly that looks like)

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      I presume the investigation is taking official testimonies and gathering actual (and traceable) evidence in order to legally confirm what we all know.

  • restingboredface@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    My God what hubris. Rush had so many chances to pause the dive or work on a redesign and ignored it. I can’t imagine the fear of being 3000+ feet below and hearing the first cracks of the hull as it starts to implode. Hope it was fast.

    • hOrni@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I don’t think there were any cracks. Most probably it was, one second there is a submersible and everything seems fine, and the next second there is no submersible. And everything is still fine because we just got rid of a few billionaires for free, and didn’t even have to use a guillotine.

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        2 months ago

        That theory doesn’t explain why they suddenly dropped ballast and attempted an ascension prior to implosion, though.

        E. After doing some digging, the comments about the Titan having dropped weights and was ascending during implosion came from James Cameron. Not sure if that makes it more or less trustworthy…

        • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          The linked article quotes somebody as saying the dropped weights were most likely to slow the descent as they approached the ocean floor. They just dropped a little weight, but not enough to start ascending again.

          • noride@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            I think that’s a fair assessment, mine isn’t all that dissimilar.

            My understanding is there were only a few meters between the weight drop and complete communication loss, so either something went wrong directly related to dropping ballast, which caused the implosion, or perhaps cues the sub was in peril were ignored/misinterpreted by the captain, and the weight drop was his ineffective corrective measure.

            From what I’ve read about the captian, I think his hubris would have never allowed him to fully consider they might be in real danger.

        • icedterminal@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Something could have gone wrong electronically or mechanically warranting a ballast drop. I have considered this to be a possibility outside of them hearing cracks and suddenly wanting to go up.

      • Brown5500@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I agree that we’re talking milliseconds between the first crack and full implosion. Any cracks in carbon fiber will act as a stress concentrator which will cause more cracking in a rapid exponential process. There’s a reason everyone else doing this said you can’t use that material. Metal has some ductility so a very tiny crack normally won’t cascade like that instantly.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      I hope so too. Especially for the kid that was brought along. But even if it was a second or two… knowing you’re about to die and there’s nothing you can do to stop it…

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        At approximately 2,274 meters, the Titan sent the message, “All good here,” according to the animation.

        The last communication from the submersible was sent at approximately 3,341 meters: “Dropped two wts,” meaning drop weights, according to the Coast Guard.

        All communications and tracking from the submersible to Polar Prince were lost at 3,346 meters, according to the Coast Guard.

        I’m assuming a lot here, but dropping weights would likely mean they were trying to ascend. They may have had just over five meters’ worth of knowing something was going wrong (whatever that means in terms of time) before the implosion.

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          For an emergency ascent, they’d probably have dropped more than two. They also probably wouldn’t have taken the time to type a message to the surface if it were going wrong that quickly.

          It seems more likely to me that they were controlling their rare of descent. I’d expect them to lose a little buoyancy as the vessel compresses, so it seems reasonable that they’d drop the occasional weight as they descend.

          • wjrii@lemmy.world
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            Fair enough. That makes a lot of sense. I have heard that the failure model for this thing likely would have been some cracking sounds, and then the implosion, but I probably shouldn’t speculate quite so hard. At any rate, the whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen, and whaddaya know, it did.

            • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Frankly, it was probably cracking and pinging all the way down, even on normal dives. They had steel titanium outer caps on the ends, and carbon fiber in the middle, those two materials stretch and compress very differently under extreme loads.

    • icedterminal@lemmy.world
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      The hubris the man had was so perfectly demonstrated in his interview.

      “There’s a rule you don’t do that. Well I did.”

      And now he’s dead.

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    Hollywood is going to make that soo dramatic! Extending the 4 nano second event into what might seem like an eternity…4 seconds tops…“Actually guys, I think we might have a…”…silence. such a Sumner moment. Oh hey, can we get rid of putin? I have an idea but we’re going to need lots of toilet paper, concrete, rope, and a baseball bat! Oh this is gonna be so good! Pinatas are fun! And a tranquilizer dart! We need that or the paper won’t stick. You don’t want a mushy pinata!