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.
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.
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.
So basically it’s a project done by MBA geniuses, entrepreneurs and visionaries who optimized by cutting on those mundane and boring nautical engineers and software developers?
God, do I like how evolution works.
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?
That’s why they use, what they know: Excel. I wonder if the UI was done in PowerPoint?
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.
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.
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.
i wonder if it would have made the trip without that crashing. not that it matters much, but wow. how insanely stupid!
It’s a good thing that no serious company uses excel spreadsheets to manage their data, right? Right?
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)
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.
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.
Agreed.
This is some of the best writing as to how/why/when cloud sucks.
I’ve shared it with my consulting friends, so they can more easily explain to (SMB) clients why cloud isn’t necessarily a good answer.
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
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.
I think it’s a hole in education. Unless you go to school for IT or programming the most advanced thing you’re probably going to be taught is spreadsheet, and yet out in the world of business you need actual database software, and Excel can kinda sorta look like it’s somewhat accomplishing that for a while so that’s what gets used.
When the only tool society has been taught exists is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
One of my seniors uses xls as a word processor. I screamed but Teams was on mute.
cries in data analyst
Did you know our company is over a thousand years old, possibly even two? Recent dives into our digital archives have unearthed invoice records dated to the year 1021, though we’re also investigating the validity of one dated to 215.
Whoever decided to make dates a manual entry text field without validation should be forced to write SQL by hand, without syntax highlighting, autocompletion, syntax checks, reference or looking up stuff, querying a database with no schema or data dictionary.
I will never get over how much media attention this gets.
Watching some of the hearing, they should be paying attention to how underfunded OSHA is. The agent assigned to one of the whistleblowers had several jobs in front of that case and never got to it before it was dropped. The company was also run on a cult of personality and anyone with any sense either left on their own or were driven out.
Does this actually fall under OSHA? I have no idea who governs regulations for private submarines lol
But this would also be crazy low priority if it was OSHA, I imagine. The people working on (doing maintenance on) the sub weren’t in danger, right? So just four to five people who sign waivers every few months? Fuck that take a look at some more meat packing factories.
The guy was reporting unsafe working conditions at the workshop the sub was being built at. There have been warnings signs for a long time that were ignored. The hearing’s purpose is to figure out who could have prevented it and have better enforcement in the future.
It’s the only way the media is allowed to point out how stupid and useless the ultra-wealthy are. For some reason the media owners allow this little bit of dunking, as a treat.
So do 90% of corporations.
