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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

#261

Post by eru »

mppm wrote: post #260
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 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. Would that 'twere so simple. Most previously reliable premium manufacturers have jumped on the enshittification bandwagon. You can get better design and a more exclusive branding if you are willing to pay more, but where exactly would you turn if you are looki…

> [...] but where exactly would you turn if you are looking, for example, for a dish washer that will just work for the next ten years?

Miele works well for us.

I understand your complaint. I'm also sure it's really hard to get high quality buggy whips these days without paying through the nose, now that everyone has switched to these newfangled horseless carriages.

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

#262

Post by mrweasel »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #232
Maxion wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland will still keep 2G for a long time.

Is there a particular reason? And how do you know so much about 2G in Finland, specifically!?

Denmark does the same. 3G has been shutdown, or mostly at least. 2G is kept running, with no plans to shut it down in the future.

Things that uses 2G:

  - Electricity meters
  - Alarm systems
  - Cooling and heating systems
  - Rat traps (?)
  - And an absolute crap-ton of early "IoT" devices.
And it's considered a backup network, with better coverage and range than 4G/5G. It also makes sense as the country is actively starting to remove the old landlines. The first cables are actively been removed from the ground.

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

#263

Post by eru »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #226
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…

But that's stuff from 25 years ago. Try it, get a windows phone with version 8.1 from ebay now and see how far you get.

Yes, that's stuff from 25 years ago. It still works in the sense that the hardware was built to last.

It's not the fault of the phone's hardware that the world has moved on. But this underscores my point: if the hardware lasts longer than the eco-system around it, that's useless, and the company should have probably saved customers a few pennies by going with something less sturdy.

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

#264

Post by zimpenfish »

bluGill wrote: post #188
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they don't reboot them every time they fuel. Commercial aircraft need continual software updates to operate. They are, in a sense, living, breathing machines. Things like navigation and terrain databases are updated inside of 30 days. Adding a scheduled reboot is one more item on a checklist that was already being run through. It's counterintuitive, but performing a reboot as a scheduled maintenance item is far m…

Mainframes in the late 80s got so good nobody was rebooting them. Then in the 90s someone's mainframe had the powerbackup generators fail in a power outage and the system went down (a once in 500 year event, but with more than 500 mainframes around the world it was statistacally bound to happen). the system didn't boot correctly and it took months to figure out all how to start all the services it was running that th…

> it took months to figure out all how to start all the services it was running

Having had to migrate a 12 year old dying server this weekend, yeah, I was 24/7 strongly cursing the idiot who didn't document anything[0]. On the plus side I did get to update a bunch of stuff to more modern practices.

[0] You will not be surprised to learn that idiot was me.[1]

[1] My other servers are much better - anything that hasn't yet been properly service'd has its own `RUNME.sh` which runs whatever it is in the correct way.

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

#265

Post by eru »

dns_snek wrote: post #259
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 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. Where do you buy long lasting stuff? This is a serious question, I'm looking for new appliances and I am willing to pay more, within reason. Let's say I'd pay double of what an appliance with similar technical characteristics would normally cost, which I want…

> Where do you buy long lasting stuff? This is a serious question, I'm looking for new appliances and I am willing to pay more, within reason.

Miele is good for household appliances like washing machines and dishwashers. Kärcher is good for vacuum cleaners. There's lots of other German (and Swiss and Japanese etc) brands like that.

But in any case, I didn't (and can't) promise that you can get that kind of quality by merely paying double.

Btw, almost all cars these days last a lot longer than they used to, and with fewer repairs. Quality has gone up across the board. Planes also fall out of the sky less often. (And that includes Boeing, despite their recent troubles, their track record would be seen as unachievable good about 20 years ago.)

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

#266

Post by eru »

macspoofing wrote: post #247
bluGill wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use your 25 year old phone for more than a snake game. most 2g towers have been turned off to make room for 4g and 5g.

That's not a good example of 'planned obsolescence'. 2G wasn't 'planned' to be obsolete, it was superseded by better technologies. Also because 2G is a *service* and not a product, it was a business decision to sunset the *service* since there is a maintenance cost to 2G *service*, as well as an opportunity cost in not being able to reserve 2G radio frequencies for 4G and 5G networks.

Yes, and this perfectly illustrates my point that putting in the extra effort to make your product ultra study is not a good engineering nor business decision, if that means the product outlasts the surrounding eco-system it needs to function.

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

#267

Post by eru »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #243
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…

Do they though, or are they just powerless consumers with no real choice, besides the colour of the wrapping?

Why would consumers be powerless?

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

#268

Post by 0xEF »

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…

Expanding a tiny bit on your point, from where I am sitting, it all be summed up with greedy, plain and simple...and extends further to Capitalism as a whole, not just corporate America. I work for a US-based manufacturing company that has customers around the world as the guy who fixes the things the engineers build when they inevitably break. I have encountered so many design flaws that could have been done far, far better but we're not, largely due to cost, that I have come to just expect it. This is admittedly sad.

Some other commenter mentioned we can have all these great long-lasting things if we "are willing to pay." We, the consumer my might be, but the manufacturer and distributer who makes the the product not only want to sell you something once, but want to sell it to you repeatedly while maximizing their profit margins. This would not be so bad if a good chunk of those yearly record profits reached the folks who were on the work floor actually making the product (thus allowing them to buy more expensive things) but instead, the money gets sucked up and stays up, while costs get passed on to the consumer who likely is not making enough to afford the longer-lasting version. Which, I guess is the point of Capitalism, in a nutshell.

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

#269

Post by eru »

wvh wrote: post #250
veltas wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup and in the UK a lot of our card payment boxes for car parks will stop working when 3G is shut down, and will be replaced with an app. People without phones need not apply!

One can see how quickly people could drop through the bottom of society once you can't afford to pay your phone or car bills. None of that technology comes cheap, not at least if you hit hard times for a while, and you will become a second class citizen.

Luckily, technology has become cheaper and cheaper over time, and continues to do so.

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

#270

Post by dns_snek »

eru wrote: post #265
dns_snek wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Where do you buy long lasting stuff? This is a serious question, I'm looking for new appliances and I am willing to pay more, within reason. Let's say I'd pay double of what an appliance with similar technical characteristics would normally cost, which I want…

> Where do you buy long lasting stuff? This is a serious question, I'm looking for new appliances and I am willing to pay more, within reason. Miele is good for household appliances like washing machines and dishwashers. Kärcher is good for vacuum cleaners. There's lots of other German (and Swiss and Japanese etc) brands like that. But in any case, I didn't (and can't) promise that you can get that kind of quality by…

Miele was my first thought as well because they were historically regarded as an expensive, but high quality brand. Now they have a Trustpilot rating of 1.6.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.miele.de

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