We now have an indication of the nature of the debris reported by the US Coast Guard (USCG) on Twitter.
It is a cover from the aft - or rear - end of the Titan submersible and its landing frame - the section under the sub that enables it to sit on a ship deck or on the seafloor.
This information hasn’t been formally confirmed by the USCG, but we expect it to be when the agency holds a media conference in the next half an hour.
It is bad news. It points to the scenario experts had feared right from the outset - that the Titan had experienced a catastrophic failure of its pressure vessel and imploded.
Honestly, this goes all the way back. The L’Ile de Lumiere, and the Cap Anamur should have been the flagships of the international community.
@ all, if you don’t know about Cap Anamur (the organisation), about Bernhard Kouchner and Rupert Neudeck, I encourage you to fire up your translation service of choice and dive into the Germanophone and Francophone parts of the web.
Writing this makes me think I could to check on websites in, e.g., Vietnamese, Syrian, and Dari. I’ll be right back after that.
Oh, did they find the sub, yet? I saw a headline about debris, but I wasn’t sure if it was about the refugees who died near the canary islands or the sub which went missing. I pity both, but most of my sympathies is with the former.
ETA: I scrolled upwards after replying and saw that they found debris which is thought to be of the sub. I’m glad they apparently did not suffer.
Amazon is moderating bad taste reviews of game controller used in Titan sub
Amazon has begun moderating the reviews section of the now infamous games controller used to control the missing Titan sub.
As news of the missing sub spread earlier this week, bad taste reviews began to appear on the shopping giant’s page for the Logitech F710 controller.
Users posted about the controller “not being good at steering a submarine” and “losing signal in the ocean”.
Before the fate of the crew aboard the sub became clear, the posts received hundreds of approvals from other shoppers and some were made into viral TikTok videos.
Amazon has started deleting the reviews as it’s understood they do not comply with community guidelines.
The Logitech F710 controller is a popular games console accessory which wirelessly connects to gaming consoles and PCs.
The relatively cheap £33 ($42) controller has become a focal point of the technology on the Titan since videos of the company CEO using it were posted online.
The US Navy detected “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” shortly after the Titan lost contact with the surface, an official has told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
The information was relayed to the US Coast Guard, which used it to narrow the radius of its search, the official added.
The banging that was reported earlier is now thought to have been coming from other ships in the area, CBS reports.
As janky as it was, the controller was never likely to be the primary culprit for a structural failure of the hull. But I wonder if there are any reviews out there for the screw-mounted monitor supports?
I agree it almost seems insane the amount of effort (and probably dollars) put into this rescue effort compared to other tragedies. But as far as media attention I sorta understand. And it’s not just because they were rich. It’s kinda like the gabby petito/Brian laundrie case - a story is more compelling when it is still happening. The horror and tragedy of imagining these people stuck with a limited amount of air waiting to be rescued is hard to look away from. But now that it’s over, now that we know their fate, I really think everyone will lose interest. Not to say news outlets won’t try to dwell on it, but as far as human nature, I think we are just more likely to be obsessed with something that is still ongoing where we don’t know the ending. It’s why cliffhangers work in television. As soon as they found evidence that Brian laundrie killed himself there was a sudden drop in media attention in that story. The refugee boat tragedy probably should have gotten more media, but I really think the reason it got less is because it was more final from a story point of view… I’m not saying that’s right… I’m just saying I think there’s some human nature/interest in that… it also doesn’t help that our brains have a hard time with large numbers of people being involved in a tragedy. Dozens or Thousands of people dying doesn’t seem to compute as much as a singular person or a small group on whom we can project our feelings…
Only one thing concerned me: He said he had gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf-life for use in airplanes.
