I don't know why people are surprised by this. Using suitable off-the-shelf solutions for non-mission-critical purposes seems like a very reasonable thing to do.

I'm recalling this from my memory of "The Space Above Us" podcast: There were various bespoke teleprinters sent up on early shuttle flights that had exciting failure modes (if I remember correctly one of them started smoking) and in at least a couple of cases they had to stow the new hardware and pull out the old backup hardware because the new stuff didn't work.

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cj 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Related thread from 2023 about the US Navy using Xbox 360 controllers instead of custom built hardware.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408604

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bombcar 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Xbox 360 controller: Good times! US Navy approved.

Madcatz controller: Bad times! OceanGate approved.

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sidewndr46 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Having had the unfortunate experience of using MadCatz controllers, I would doubt the sanity of anyone that selected one

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cobertos 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

OceanGate was Logitech not MadCatz

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bombcar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I deeply regret the error; MadCatz would have failed long before.

Gad those things were crap.

	▲	kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They'd probably still be alive if they used MadCatz, because it would have failed long before they submerged.

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2muchcoffeeman 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m surprised they went with outlook rather than something like thunderbird. And I’m surprised they are burning power on an os that can run outlook.

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bombcar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A Macbook Neo can run outlook just fine and pulls what, 20 watts?

	▲	yjftsjthsd-h 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I would be fascinated to see the actual measured power consumption at baseline and when it's actually running Outlook

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wetpaws 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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