• @Lost_My_Mind
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    836 hours ago

    I’m only 41 years old.

    This recievier has been working for my whole life, goes out of service 15 billion miles away, turns on a backup reciever, and is now back in contact with NASA.

    …but the ice cream machine at McDonalds is still broken.

    • chingadera
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      32 hours ago

      Holy fuck is the real distance?

    • @roofuskit
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      English
      445 hours ago

      Both are by design. The ice cream machine actually just got a DMCA exception so the company that makes it no longer can dictate who repairs it.

    • @USNWoodwork
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      164 hours ago

      I’m picturing the Voyager 1 terminal is an ancient computer from the 1970s hooked up to a large parabolic antenna, and everyone is afraid to upgrade it because they might mess something up. I’m sure that’s not the case, but its what lives in my mind.

      Since I was thinking about it I looked up some stuff: “So Voyager-1 does not “really” have a computer, in the sense that it does not have an operating system or RAM or a microprocessor. It was built in the 60s before any of this was invented and used CMOS-based microcontroller chips from Texas Instruments. Overall, it has a 16-bit processor and a MASSIVE memory of 70 KILOBYTES. That is smaller memory than a thumbnail of a phone image today, but it was enough to send images through which we discovered Jupiter has rings and much more.”

      From: https://medium.com/towards-generative-ai/voyager-1-what-computer-system-it-has-that-is-still-running-strong-a269aaea316b