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Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

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Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#51

Post by zimpenfish »

masfuerte wrote: post #22
hakunin wrote: post #20

I’ve been looking at emulation for the first time in a long time, and it also blows my mind that entire big detailed games that we played for many hours take 100-400kb total (NES) or 2-4mb (Genesis).

My first computer had 32KB. Reading the headline there's still a part of my brain that went "69KB? Luxury!".

> My first computer had 32KB.

1KB for me[0]. Then another 1KB[1] expanded to 16KB via my father's electronic wizardry. Then an official 16KB[2] and ever upwards from there.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#52

Post by armanj »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #32
saadn92 wrote: post #6

The thruster fix is the part that gets me. They sent a command that would either revive thrusters dead since 2004 or cause a catastrophic explosion, then waited 46 hours for the round trip with zero ability to intervene. That's a production deployment with no rollback, no monitoring dashboard, and a 23-hour latency on your logs. They nailed it.

I'd argue that once you have a very well defined requirement doc that mostly kicks humans out of the picture, as well as a patient boss who doesn't want anything ASAP or "Tomorrow morning first thing", engineering is not that hard, and is almost...enjoyment.

A well defined doc evolves over time. it gets sharper with real-world scenarios, incidents, and experiments. Before Voyager 1, we didn’t have that kind of experience. You can’t predict everything upfront.

> Theory only takes you so far

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#53

Post by SpaceNoodled »

y1n0 wrote: post #42
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that once you have a very well defined requirement doc that mostly kicks humans out of the picture, as well as a patient boss who doesn't want anything ASAP or "Tomorrow morning first thing", engineering is not that hard, and is almost...enjoyment.

I’d argue that you must not be working on interesting problems if you think that “engineering is not that hard”

I think their point is that the challenge becomes more enjoyable than tedious.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#55

Post by rkagerer »

tombert wrote: post #47
amiga-workbench wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's almost certainly less than 69KB of useful human-readable information on any given page.

I was actually a bit curious how much HN uses, since it's probably the lightest site that I frequent. According to Brave's dev tools, looks like just shy of about 90kb on this comment page as of the time of this writing. Obviously some of that is going to be CSS rules, a small amount of JS (I think for the upvotes and the comment-collapse), but I don't think anyone here called HN "bloated". Even that one page wouldn'…

There is more information in a typical, single page of comments here than there is on the average webpage. And I'd say a far higher signal to noise ratio (though depending on the topic discussed some will disagree).

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#56

Post by reaperducer »

trgn wrote: post #46
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that once you have a very well defined requirement doc that mostly kicks humans out of the picture, as well as a patient boss who doesn't want anything ASAP or "Tomorrow morning first thing", engineering is not that hard, and is almost...enjoyment.

Would sending voyager have been a real definite deadline?

Absolutely. You could wait decades or centuries for a useful planetary alignment.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#57

Post by reaperducer »

tombert wrote: post #47
amiga-workbench wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's almost certainly less than 69KB of useful human-readable information on any given page.

I was actually a bit curious how much HN uses, since it's probably the lightest site that I frequent. According to Brave's dev tools, looks like just shy of about 90kb on this comment page as of the time of this writing. Obviously some of that is going to be CSS rules, a small amount of JS (I think for the upvotes and the comment-collapse), but I don't think anyone here called HN "bloated". Even that one page wouldn'…

I was actually a bit curious how much HN uses, since it's probably the lightest site that I frequent.

I use an iPhone 5 as an iPod. HN is one of the few web sites that still works with iOS 10.

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#58

Post by reaperducer »

varjag wrote: post #26
divbzero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any website that uses more memory than Voyager 1 should be considered bloated.

Any development team larger than Apollo programming team of 350 is overstaffed.

Any development team larger than Apollo programming team of 350 is overstaffed

We put a man on the moon mostly with pencils and slide rules.

Today we have massive data centers full of "AI" supercomputers, and we get… TikTok?

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#59

Post by greenavocado »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #25
divbzero wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any website that uses more memory than Voyager 1 should be considered bloated.

There's almost certainly less than 69KB of useful human-readable information on any given page.

640K is all anybody actually needs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120477

Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder

#60

Post by Quitschquat »

bikamonki wrote: post #40

Wow! Reading this after watching PHM I almost cried...again. Now, this is what impressed me the most: ""... and wrote software flexible enough to be updated from Earth decades after launch.." OTA patches where invented in the 70's :)

What's PHM
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