Perhaps you know this already, but Voyager 2 actually uses an tape recorder for data storage. I assume that all other options were either too fragile or too expensive back when it was built.
The vehicle records flight and sensor data to tape, and then periodically broadcasts that back to earth. As of 2022 the tape drive appears to be still working [1].
I believe tape was chosen mostly for capacity reasons. The Voyager DTR can store 109 megabytes, which was impractically large for any other storage medium.
Amazing it happened at all. Some scientists determined that 1977 allowed a once-in-a-millennia planetary alignment and pushed to get NASA money to send a prob. It was touch and go as to whether the funds would be allocated and if there would even be time to get it into the proper trajectory in time.
I wonder if current technology can achieve the same level of reliability.
For software, I fear complexity would make it much harder to build something that works for 50+ years, the probability of some nasty long term overflow bug or slow memory leak would make that difficult.
>I wonder if current technology can achieve the same level of reliability.
Yes, although that is very rarely a design goal.
>For software, I fear complexity would make it much harder to build something that works for 50+ years, the probability of some nasty long term overflow bug or slow memory leak would make that difficult.
Not that hard to handle. You just need to setup an appropriate architecture. In Aeronautic software systems you often have forced resets, if the software is not reaching certain points of exrcution.
You also do not have memory leaks, since you do not have dynamic memory.
Am I the only one who would pay micro transaction fees to read specific high quality articles? I guess so since so many companies just died instead of trying that model.
In my (Tiny East European) country, all the main outlets have tried this. Eventually, one had to pay close to the price of a whole printed issue to read a single article online. By now, essentially all outlets have ditched this model, pushing readers towards monthly subscriptions.
Might be different in the US, considering its scope, but around here, this "buy me a coffee" type model just doesn't seem to work.
In my experience, some banks offer ACH pushing through Bill Pay but often an ACH is only made if the recipient is on a master list of known institutions (like for paying your electricity) and if the recipient is not on this list then a check is sent by mail. YMMV though
It is, but assuming that GP is from Europe, the confusion will be around the distinction between bill payment and P2P payments, which seems arbitrary to bank customers in many other countries:
With SEPA credit transfer (and other similar systems), bank customers can send mony to any other account directly and automatically by only stating the recipient's account number and amount. There is no list of well-known/trusted(?) payees; businesses and individuals can receive money from other businesses and individuals alike.
In the US, for reasons that I don't fully understand yet, this type of P2P push ACH payment is generally only offered between accounts that have been verified to belong to the same person. I suspect that it's largely a question of money transmission licenses, the recipient's unwillingness to freely hand over their account number (due to concerns about unauthorized ACH pulls!) and/or fraud liability.
When both the government and the advertising companies have an aligned incentive to spy on us all, Why would the government pass either privacy or advertising laws?
That's the problem with democracy at the moment, vested interests have taken control of the forum because (a) they're able to and (b) the majority of citizens are just not interested in or engaged with the issues.
You see this everywhere not only with security etc. but also in many other areas. A classic case is copyright law where a small number of powerful people have hijacked the debate and managed to impement grosely unfair laws in their favor. They're so organized and powerful that they've not only been successful domestically but also internationally with treaties etc. It's almost impossible to break these nexes when the populace at large is so complacent.
In short, our current democratic structures favor the powerful, money-rich and organized at the expense of the disinterested who are disinterested because they're not yet aware of the issues involved and thus don't yet know that they stand to lose or be disadvantaged. There is no effective advocacy system to support them and conterbbalance the push at the early stages of law formation and thus we end up with laws that overcompensate the initial lobby and which are extremely hard to unwind later, especially so when international treaties are involved.
Outside a revolution I cannot see change happening and revolutions are the very last thing we need, they end up disastrously for everyone.
I disagree. The problem with (multi-party) based democracy is that it is way more important to be popular with the party seniority, than with the constituents.
If fact, if you want to be a member of a parliament, its essential to first be popular with the party, before you get a shot at being popular with your voters.
Not disagreeing, I should have said 'one of the problems'.
Nevertheless, same goes here, there's insufficient interest from the citizenry to break that nexus too. Breaking party loyalty etc. to obtain a fairer system has been the bane of modern democracy for hundreds of years - back to Hobbes, Locke etc. As I said it's depressing that there's no easy solution.
Edit: Same goes for any lobby who wields effective power over the elected, remember Edmund Burke got the shift from the electors of Bristol when he dared move off their agenda to put broader (national) interest first. Whilst this broader approach seems fairer/better for all it's nevertheless a double-edge sword though, as it allows politicalians an excuse to pursue another agenda - one that may not be in either the electors' or national interest but rather that of a third party or even him or herself. The problem remains, we've no effective way of fixing it/balancing all interests fairly.
Thanks for the perspective. The closest western way of thinking to be is, "It is not the about the destination but the journey". The whole concept also reminds me of Eckhart Tolle's "Life is the dancer and you are the dance?", which is a very different way of thinking about yourself as the changing and moving thing instead of a fixed person.
> The closest western way of thinking to be is, "It is not the about the destination but the journey"
For the Mona Lisa, I think favoring the original is caring about the journey. You can use the same techniques but you can never recreate the circumstances the painting was made in.
In the dichotomy of destination and journey, using the same craft to recreate a centuries-old portrait gets you something like an A for destination but a D+ for journey.
For a temple, the craftsmanship is probably a bigger part of the journey, but it's still only a part.
