this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
643 points (97.9% liked)

Technology

58150 readers
3831 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] CatZoomies@lemmy.world 90 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What’s Taters, precious?

[–] kambusha@feddit.ch 38 points 9 months ago

Spoil em, flash em, laser out a few.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Michal@programming.dev 67 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Using a laser they could just as well send the cat. He would follow the laser just as well.

[–] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Guess what the cat is doing in the video

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Faster than light travel achieved

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 46 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Bit annoying that they're more specific about latency than bandwidth. The laser had lower latency than broadband, but I want to know if the laser had enough bandwidth to stream the video.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 36 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This latest milestone comes after “first light” was achieved on Nov. 14. Since then, the system has demonstrated faster data downlink speeds and increased pointing accuracy during its weekly checkouts. On the night of Dec. 4, the project demonstrated downlink bit rates of 62.5 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 267 Mbps, which is comparable to broadband internet download speeds. The team was able to download a total of 1.3 terabits of data during that time. As a comparison, NASA’s Magellan mission to Venus downlinked 1.2 terabits during its entire mission from 1990 to 1994.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/tech-demo-missions-program/deep-space-optical-communications-dsoc/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser/

[–] ButtDrugs@lemm.ee 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Honestly the 1.2 TB I'm the early 90s is an insanely impressive figure to me. I mean in that era a gigabyte seemed like an obscene amount of data, the interat ran at less than 56 kbps, and I don't think I had a 1GB drive in my hime PC until almost the turn of the millennium. Sending and storing that much from venus is a huge accomplishment.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

1.2 Tb* ~ 150GB

Still impressive though

[–] kittyjynx@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

They probably stored it on tape which was slow but could hold an impressive amount of data.

I remember my first multi gig hard drive. I was blown away that I could fully install Diablo 2, Fallout 2, and a cracked version of 3d Studio Max at the same time. No more changing disks!

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Lower latency than broadband...?

If you're getting >100s ping times you might want to have them come out to check your lines.

[–] neptune@dmv.social 19 points 9 months ago

"The video was then downloaded and each frame was sent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where it was played in real time. "

It sounds like it. Laser comm can have some insanely high data rates due to the high frequency of the radiation.

[–] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world 34 points 9 months ago (4 children)

What strikes me is not the bandwidth achieved but the precision of the technology to aim the laser. 19 million miles is a great distance to successfully aim a beam of light. As this technology develops, real time communications with objects in orbit like around Mars will be possible.

[–] SirHery@lemmy.world 41 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Well realtime is just not true. But cool technology nonetheless.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I'm wondering if we will need to tweak our Internet protocols to include interplanetary time? I would imagine mirroring would be much more important. Because light can only go so fast.

[–] ooterness@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Yes, the high latency and intermittent connectivity is a big challenge. Delay tolerant networking (DTN) is one good way of solving this problem.

[–] Doorbook@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think the issue, again will be date and time.

DDMMYYYY + Planet + Orbit?

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 9 months ago

software developers are seething

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

UTC and forget

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] gens@programming.dev 9 points 9 months ago

The beam is reeeealy wide by the time it gets there. Still a great achivement, though.

[–] littlebluespark@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

I presume that we're not yet concerned with what the Ansible tech awoke in the vast emptiness between, hmm?

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago

Despite transmitting from millions of miles away, it was able to send the video faster than most broadband internet connections

That guy must be a Spectrum subscriber

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"We're receiving coherent signals from the edge of the Milky Way."

"Life can exist in such isolation? What are they saying, do they need rescue?"

"It's a video of a small fuzzy animal."

"What?"

"When we probed deeper to get more context, we found millions of such videos, supposedly they're cherished non-intelligient companions and the people there wished to express that."

"...

...

What?"

[–] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

This strikes me with a "They're made of meat?!" vibe.

[–] burt@programming.dev 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The article isn't terribly long, but here is the direct link to Taters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 8 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=GvJtVOmFs5Q

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The MCRN & UNN would be proud.

[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Can't wait til we can start watching interplanetary wars play out in real time.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Pretty sure it won't be in real time with all the light delay.

[–] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can we have space settlement without the war and genocide? It's not like killing Indians and robbing trains is a fundamental requirement.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That depends on if space is colonized by homo sapiens, or by an evolved form of ants, who rise up millions of years after humans have gone extinct.

The civilization that evolved from ants possibly could.

Humans? Doubtful.

[–] Sconrad122@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You are giving ants way too much credit. Those fuckers are brutal war criminals, the lot of them. Humans are bad, but we've had nukes for almost 80 years without glassing ourselves, ants wouldn't last a day

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

No, because I'm assuming that one colony will wipe out the rest and earth will be ruled by the hereditary line of matriarchs of whatever the queen ant evolves into.

They'll probably enslave and brutalize all other species on the planet, but they'll rule earth as a single unified colony, and space as an extension of that.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Somewhere on my work wiki is a picture of puppies that I sent over SWIFT to a bank to test that the relationship was setup properly.

Cats and dogs are always acceptable test messages

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 months ago

This tracks

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 9 points 9 months ago
  1. This is the correct use of technology. (But later let's test the ping on Doom over laserlan)

  2. Taters is very precious!!

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

"What's Taters?"

"Po-ta-toes... Boil um mash um stick um in a stew!"

[–] quams69@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Taters, star surfer

[–] Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Everything's fun and games until the Kilrathi discover this and its point of origin.

[–] DigitalFrank@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Taters should have his own wikipedia page. First outer space cat video.

[–] Ajsra@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That is cute. But why a cat?

[–] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] Ajsra@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Right. I guess I kinda agree.

[–] Promethiel@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Joke answer: It's cute.

Real answer: It's cute and because of that broad appeal it's easy good PR. NASA has to appeal to the populace to hope they demand their Representatives properly fund them.

load more comments
view more: next ›