Very depressing to see this next to the "LinkedIn uses 2.4GB of RAM" post.
You have to spin it positively: LinkedIn is 350.000 x Voyager.
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
#152Very depressing to see this next to the "LinkedIn uses 2.4GB of RAM" post.
To be fair. this HN thread useees 40-70 MB of ram in Chrome.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
curl https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47564421#47564679 | wc -c 143927 curl https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47564421#47564679 | pup -p --charset utf8 'text{}' | wc -c 30954
That's only HTML but when it is loaded in chromr it is more than 40 MiB.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.
James Webb Telescope is up there with Hubble.
The rovers on Mars as well and New Horizons that went to Pluto. That is also at escape velocity so it will leave this solar system and most likely no human will ever lay eyes on it again. Voy 1 and 2 are still faster but hey they're all going in different directions so it's not exactly a race.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#155Voyager 1 & 2 is one of my favourite human science achievements, not even so much from technology standpoint, as it's relatively simple compared to what we have now (although that's one of the charms), but just the fact that it's so far away, it still more or less works long after the scheduled mission end time, we can communicate with it and despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch…
A large amount of Voyager 1 & 2 's success isn't just technological it is the ability to take advantage of a specific planetary alignment for a gravity assist [1] that can only occur every 175 years [2] . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_...
Every 20 years, Jupiter and Saturn are in position for a gravity assist, which allows you to reach half the outer solar system. In the 1970s, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were all in the right half.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#156There’s a lot of LLM text in that article. It’s very offputting.
Indeed. I also had this weird feeling while reading through the article. It got hooked up in the beginning. And then at some point, my brain just noticed that it was LLM-generated. I wonder how this article was written. Did the author accidentally find about Voyager 1's tiny memory and its primitive tape technology while reading something else, or did he just ask LLMs to write something interesting that he could publish with a few prompts.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#157Here's a photo of the tape recorder: https://science.nasa.gov/image-detail/voyager-digital-record...
Pretty cool. Thanks for sharing
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
A large amount of Voyager 1 & 2 's success isn't just technological it is the ability to take advantage of a specific planetary alignment for a gravity assist [1] that can only occur every 175 years [2] . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#/media/File:Voyager_...
Fingers crossed, if we manage not to blow each other up until then, we have 126 years to go till we can try again.
Ideally cattle not pets. We are continually shooting stuff out and in 126 years it'll be as nerveracking and watching a train departure, but still exciting knowing the train is going further.
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#159[dead]
Re: Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
#160Voyager 1 & 2 is one of my favourite human science achievements, not even so much from technology standpoint, as it's relatively simple compared to what we have now (although that's one of the charms), but just the fact that it's so far away, it still more or less works long after the scheduled mission end time, we can communicate with it and despite all the modern technology progress, it would take decades to catch…
Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.
I don't think Apollo was very interesting or useful beyond cold war propaganda. Yes, we're capable of amazing things—but putting a man on the moon pales in comparison to basic healthcare funding. Why must we insist on wasting billions on histrionic braggadocio when we can't perform the basics of a modern society?