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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

#221

Post by salawat »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #213
kadoban wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's better things to dump instead of Apollo if you want a basically functioning society. Pick your couple of least favorite wars of choice in America's recent history. Apollo at least gave the country hope and showed that we could accomplish big ideas.

But—we clearly can't accomplish basic things. That's my point

And the reason why is those things must be profitable, and once you accept everything must be profitable, there is no ceiling to exploitation. Whereas with big things like Apollo, we didn't do it because it would make money. We did it because we decided it was the right thing to do.

Stop being a capitalist hellhole, and maybe try being a country that happens to operate under bounded capitalism, and just maybe, maybe, you can see some of that progress.

But what am I saying, cmon, that'll never happen.

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

#222

Post by ramon156 »

> The phone in your pocket has roughly one million times more memory than the computer running Voyager 1.

I know both things are almost entirely unrelated, but I sometimes wonder how much more perf you could squeeze out of a phone if Android wasn't doing so much stuff in the background. Granted I do not know enough about the inner workings.

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

#224

Post by brador »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #74
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #49

Voyager 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_...

I wonder what the optimal most fastest speed out of the solar system gravity assist path ever possible is and when that occurs?

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

#225

Post by grishka »

ramon156 wrote: post #222

> The phone in your pocket has roughly one million times more memory than the computer running Voyager 1. I know both things are almost entirely unrelated, but I sometimes wonder how much more perf you could squeeze out of a phone if Android wasn't doing so much stuff in the background. Granted I do not know enough about the inner workings.

Android does a lot less stuff in the background than it used to.

Initially there were no limitations at all, your app could just do whatever, you ask to start a service, the system runs it for you no questions asked, only kills it if a foreground app needs memory, and then restarts it whenever possible.

Modern Android is very strict about this sort of thing in comparison. You only run something in the background if you have a good reason to, and you better display a notification while it's running. Background processes that try to do stuff in the background without telling the system are killed and throttled aggressively.

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

#226

Post by the_af »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #204
the_af wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if leaving the solar system, or whatever system a sentient race exists, were possible, going to war with another sentience in their home turf (which, remember, must first overcome the near impossible hurdles of getting there to begin with) is so unlikely it makes invasion fears absurd. I think the dark forest theory is groundless paranoia. Scifi usually bypasses this by breaking the laws of physics, for the sake…

People don't get dark forest at all. Dark Forest isn't about hiding from invasion . It's about hiding from getting preemptively sniped by someone else, worried that one day you may find a reason and a way to snipe them . For this to work out you don't need interstellar colonization to be plausible - merely the ability to accelerate a rock to a significant fraction of the speed of light is enough, and that's definitel…

It's still very impractical though. Sniping everywhere that intelligent life might exist is very low probability, low stakes, and for what reason? You don't have any reason to kill anyone you're unlikely to ever meet. And with a weapon which, by the time it arrives, your civilization might be gone. And for what? You cannot compete for resources you cannot reach. War doesn't work like this, it requires anger and an adversary that you can meet in your lifetime.

Dark Forest also assumes aliens aren't curious and thrilled about other life existing out there. The one civilization we are familiar with wouldn't react like this. And we're talking about a very warlike civilization!

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

#227

Post by krapp »

dheera wrote: post #200
krapp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radio signals do weaken and dissipate over time and space. Broadcast signals could fade into the cosmic microwave background in a few light years depending on their strength. The sci-fi trope of aliens picking up Earth tv and radio just isn't plausible.

Imagine how far technology has come in 100 years. Then imagine if the alien had just a 1 million year head start to technology. 1 million years is less than 1/1000 of the age of the universe earlier. We have literally no idea what technology the alien could have.

Maybe there are aliens out there so advanced that they could be reading our screens right now in realtime from across the galaxy using some weird post-quantum silly sauce we can't even comprehend. But it doesn't seem likely given what we do know and observe, at least not to me (based mostly on the Fermi Paradox and thermodynamics) that there is someone 100 light years away teasing I Love Lucy from the CMB. It seems less likely that they would be able to pinpoint our location based on that, and try to annihilate us.

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

#228

Post by lclc »

salawat wrote: post #221
throwaway27448 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But—we clearly can't accomplish basic things. That's my point

And the reason why is those things must be profitable, and once you accept everything must be profitable, there is no ceiling to exploitation. Whereas with big things like Apollo, we didn't do it because it would make money. We did it because we decided it was the right thing to do. Stop being a capitalist hellhole, and maybe try being a country that happens to operate under bounded capitalism, and just maybe, maybe,…

The US in the 1960s was more capitalist than it is now (by governement size, spending, taxation, regulation and economic freeodm, too-big-to-fail, etc.).

There has to be profit first to be able to fund big things like Apollo. Profit is good.

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