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Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#211

Post by Sebb767 »

picture wrote: post #140
pvaldes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is HN, a bunch of computer programmers think they know more than And they are correct At least on the programming part, having in mind the huge advances in computers since the Voyager was built. Any professional computer programmer here knows more in their field than a programmer from 70's. A Voyager built today with similar resources would be much better, 100% guaranteed. Voyager 1 was a fantastic machine don…

But this is about the overall engineering of Voyager, not just the programming. Also, I'm skeptical how much better modern hardware will fare in deep space conditions, considering the use of finer and more fragile electronics. Since you're talking about general people instead of specialists, also consider how the median software developer seem to focus less on correctness, reliability, and optimization, compared to t…

> Also, I'm skeptical how much better modern hardware will fare in deep space conditions, considering the use of finer and more fragile electronics.

Since then, we had massive advantages in manufacturing. Maybe COTS parts aren't as usable in space as they were back then, but we can now easily manufacture something more resilient or, as a fallback, simply use those old parts. Also, basically all current electronics are designed to be and are used on earth ~100% of the time. Over-engineering it for use in space is just a waste.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#212

Post by tucnak »

yodon wrote: post #138
pvaldes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is HN, a bunch of computer programmers think they know more than And they are correct At least on the programming part, having in mind the huge advances in computers since the Voyager was built. Any professional computer programmer here knows more in their field than a programmer from 70's. A Voyager built today with similar resources would be much better, 100% guaranteed. Voyager 1 was a fantastic machine don…

You might be surprised to read the papers written by those early software developers. They were writing in the late 1960's and early 1970's about fundamental issues most developers of today don't fully grasp. You might think, for example "waterfall, ewwww", but if you go back and re-read the first paper on waterfall development, it makes clear that waterfall development is in fact an anti-pattern. How many here are s…

> if you aren't thinking about Amdahl's law you're just a hacker and not actually an engineer.

This is really funny stuff, thank you!

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#213

Post by b112 »

sgarland wrote: post #156
pvaldes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is HN, a bunch of computer programmers think they know more than And they are correct At least on the programming part, having in mind the huge advances in computers since the Voyager was built. Any professional computer programmer here knows more in their field than a programmer from 70's. A Voyager built today with similar resources would be much better, 100% guaranteed. Voyager 1 was a fantastic machine don…

I seriously doubt that the average dev today knows more than the average dev in the 70s. In fact, I would happily wager money on it, if it were somehow provable one way or the other. There are so many abstractions today that you don’t _have_ to know how computers work. They did. Re: state of the art, you don’t need or want state of the art for building things that go into space, or underwater (closest analogue I can…

The average dev knows far far less today. Just how deeply people had to know hardware back then is a massive difference.

And if we look at the average dev today, most code is in the framework, or a node package, or composer package, and the average dev gets by via stack overflow or AI.

There are certainly devs that actually understand coding, but the average dev barely does. Most devs don't understand the underlying OS, the hardware, or externals such as databases at all. It's all abstracted away.

And coders back then had almost nothing abstracted away.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#214

Post by onion2k »

johnklos wrote: post #152

I think the Voyager probes teach us lots about what's wrong with corporate America. Imagine devices that don't have built-in obsolescence, or licensing that expires, or that isn't built by committee where they just keep shipping requirements around from one department to another. Imagine if it weren't all proprietary and if it didn't have no public or even complete documentation. Think of all the problems we have ins…

Everything is designed to last between a few years and a decade, with the expectation that there's no point engineering for longer than that because something better will replace it by then. This feels bad but it's generally correct. Practically every aspect of technology is improving so fast there's little point trying to engineer things that last, because a stronger, cheaper, lighter, thinner thing will be available long before the thing has expired.

Agile is a response to this, not the cause.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#215

Post by [deleted] »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #145

Whenever such an announcement is made, I keep asking myself something along the lines: "Just how much stuff did they put on board that thing, that there is always some way of using something differently or something different, to get back a working connection???" Incredible engineering.

[deleted]

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#216

Post by Sebb767 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #102
jonplackett wrote: post #17

Were engineers 50 years ago just much smarter than we are now? It’s pretty unbelievable that these things still work. Or is there something systemic about how they were able to achieve so much so long ago with basically no computers to help.

>Were engineers 50 years ago just much smarter than we are now? Were the 2006 sony santa monica programmers smarter then us when they delivered God of War 2 for the PS2 on its tiny resources? Usually the constraints force you to become inventive and smart. Put a hard limit of 128 mb per tab on web browsers and suddenly both the developers of the browsers and the web developers will become extremely smart. The over ab…

> The over abundance of resources has made the majority of software engineers lazy.

I don't think "lazy" is the right word, it's just that cheap hardware makes most optimizations not worthwhile. Why spend weeks optimizing an application, costing thousands of dollars and potentially introducing a lot of complexity bugs, when paying 50$ instead of 5$ for a server is also an option? Not to mention the importance of time to market and the time value of money (even if the server cost will armotize, spending the money later might be worth it).

There obviously is some laziness and useless complexity in our industry, but a lot of it simply is the rational choice. We all love the ingenuity of assembler-hacking the last few bits of performance out of the CPU, but for most usescases, this is simply wasted effort.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#217

Post by notpushkin »

nyjah wrote: post #198
eru wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine devices that don't have built-in obsolescence, or licensing that expires, [...] You can buy long lasting stuff just fine, if you are willing to pay. You can get eternal licenses (or an outright sale of rights), if you are willing to pay. It's all about trade-offs, and many people have priorities that are different from 'last as long as possible'. Eg many computers from the 1980s are still perfectly usable t…

You can get eternal licenses (or an outright sale of rights), if you are willing to pay Not for everything. When I can do that I do, but it’s getting harder and harder to avoid subscription fees for everything these days.

Yeah. I mean, technically if you walk into Adobe’s office with $1M in cash, they might make an exception, but that isn’t exactly practical.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#218

Post by bongoman37 »

johnklos wrote: post #152

I think the Voyager probes teach us lots about what's wrong with corporate America. Imagine devices that don't have built-in obsolescence, or licensing that expires, or that isn't built by committee where they just keep shipping requirements around from one department to another. Imagine if it weren't all proprietary and if it didn't have no public or even complete documentation. Think of all the problems we have ins…

[dead]

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#219

Post by Wurdan »

onion2k wrote: post #214
johnklos wrote: post #152

I think the Voyager probes teach us lots about what's wrong with corporate America. Imagine devices that don't have built-in obsolescence, or licensing that expires, or that isn't built by committee where they just keep shipping requirements around from one department to another. Imagine if it weren't all proprietary and if it didn't have no public or even complete documentation. Think of all the problems we have ins…

Everything is designed to last between a few years and a decade, with the expectation that there's no point engineering for longer than that because something better will replace it by then. This feels bad but it's generally correct. Practically every aspect of technology is improving so fast there's little point trying to engineer things that last, because a stronger, cheaper, lighter, thinner thing will be availabl…

Planned obsolescence isn't only a thing with fast moving technology either. Engineers design bridges with a finite lifespan in mind as well, and it's not because they think there'll be a much better bridge in X years. It's just that the relationship between the expected lifespan of a thing and its cost to develop is exponential.

Re: Voyager 1 breaks its silence with NASA via radio transmitter not used since 1981

#220

Post by georgebcrawford »

selcuka wrote: post #208
smcin wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, North America, you mean. 2G is still alive and kicking, especially in Africa and South Asia: https://streetwave.co/mobile-networks/2g-switch-off-by-count... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Phase-out

Australia is shutting down 3G this year.

Didn't it shut down at the start of the month?
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