Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1
The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.
So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.
So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.
Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.
And the probe is working again.
From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.
leitmotifs never get old to me like holy shit dude there’s this melody that corresponds to this one guy and if you hear the melody it means the guy is there. holy shit. and sometimes it refers to ideas too not just guys. has anyone heard about this
just had to stop myself from getting into this on another site so shout out to lon suder (star trek voyager) for getting less normal as he gets better, it's a hell of a thing to see.
the happier, healthier and significantly less murderous version of him is even more intense and offputting than the original and has to schedule a quiet mental breakdown on the floor when he's having a tough day, and I appreciate this so much
the thing about star trek is i don't watch it to see a group of plucky gun loving cadets save the galaxy or something i'm watching it to see the unlucky nerd of the week face their mortality in a way that is so fucked up and creepy. or to perform in community theater or go to therapy over confidence issues or play trombone or something