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Comment by Karupan | Hacker News Reader

According to the NYTimes, OceanGate refused to undergo any sort of external audit/certification process [0]. I would imagine using an off the shelf, cheap controller would have been one of the first things to be flagged. Makes you wonder how many other critical components did they skimp on

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/20/us/titanic-missing-s...

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This is what actually amazes me. The reliability of something like an airplane, bus, or train, is held to extremely high engineering standards. There are even safety rules for bicycles. But you're allowed to take people for rides in a submarines with barely any oversight.

As the saying goes, "safety regulation is written in blood" and I expect this to be somewhat modified.

It's complicated somewhat if the submarine is launched and operated in international waters, however.

How else would Cthulhu be kept pacified?

Likely due to two things:

1) Many more people fly or bike than ride in submarines.

2) Regulations are written in blood. Too many of these types of accidents and then safety rules will be established and enforced (hopefully).

What international safety standards apply to bicycles? Seems to me that if you’re way out in international waters it’s not too surprising that no one is going to step in to stop you doing something this stupid. There’s not much jurisdiction.

ISO 4210 comes to mind. There's also a handful of ASTM standards, F2043 for categories based on intended usage, and others specifying the testing requirements for frames etc. Not sure if legally required, but if my memory doesn't fail, all European-branded bikes I've seen are tested by those standards and categorized (e.g. cat 5 for downhill mountain bikes)

Sorry I phrased the question badly. I mean to say which standards are enforced by law globally? ISO 4210 certainly exists globally but I’m sure there are a great many countries where you can buy a bike that violates it.

Here:

https://www.cpsc.gov/content/bicycle-requirements-business-g...

That is not globally enforced.

Most standard aren't. Gwrmany has DIN, Japan has JST, we have ANSI, etc.

These are for the US, it's written in law:

https://www.cpsc.gov/content/bicycle-requirements-business-g...

Those are for the US. They are not global.

All those items you list are operated inside national boundaries and can be regulated. I think they only operate in international waters specifically to avoid regulations.

Why would off the shelf be considered a bad thing?

If you’re an engineer, finding a reliable part from a supplier that meets your spec is an amazing thing.

Intel processors are off the shelf, as are 555 timers, screws, literally everything.

Not every field is like computer science where “isEven” has a library that makes sense to avoid

It's less than it's off the shelf and more that it's the cheap brand your mom might buy your little brother as a second controller because it's half the price of the first-party one.

Fair!

It’s cheap because it’s mass produced. If you asked for one you’d be charged for all the engineering, r&d and manufacturing for a one off. It would be a suitably expensive controller, but probably no higher quality.

The cheap controller angle is noise in my opinion.

It’s cheap because if it breaks you just get a new one. A part for a vehicle needs more reliability than that so it costs more.

I’m not sure how an items cost can be determined by the action you might take after it breaks..

It costs what it costs because that’s how much it costs to make it and have a mark up on it. These factors are not a commentary on its durability, robustness or quality. Try as you might to find a correlation.

There's a lot of room between one-off and a logitech controller from wal-mart. You can buy a COTS industrial or marine joystick which is tested and has a documented direct interface.

The Microsoft controller is significantly better, with millions of dollars of R&D behind it, and I bought mine for $35 a few years ago.

If you learned the autopilot on the 777 your flying on was running on a dell laptop they bought at best buy running windows, would you feel safe on that plane?

Sounds like a false equivalence

I control+f'd for "refus" and didn't see a mention of this. To whom did they refuse? To whom do they owe a certification?

I don’t know in this case, but it’s often an insurance company.

Are they required to carry insurance?

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