Sunny Disposish

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.

an article on the subject for the curious:

What language would this even be? I'm assuming something really low level, close to the metal, Assembly? Or maybe FORTRAN? I know that the three Voyager computers were proprietary 16bit & 18bit computers made from Texas Instruments 7400 ICs, but I have no idea what they used to program them. I don't think it's COBOL like someone in the replies suggested, that's too verbose.

Assembly is correct! It's a specialized form to maximize efficiency, but yes. And from what I remember of my Assembly classes in college, dear fucking God pay those programmers in fucking gold bars because DAYUM.

Looks like we're both right, it's Assembly and FORTRAN, I found an old Popular Mechanics article on it.

It's probably a modified FORTRAN 66. I don't actually code myself, I remember a little BASIC and I can hack together a BASH shell script if I have to, I'm more just interested in the history.

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

It's "mne-eeh-t." "Mne-eht" said with that soft tongue on the upper palette French sound or "mee-yet". I put the "n" because the pretty tongue roll on the "y" kinda sounds "n"-like to me.

I've been saying it Mee-yet in my head. Like the French word for "crumb."

Yeah, mee-yet

Little harbour moment 🚧

Drawing by: Bam

Colour by: Maki

It was too cute so I decided to colour it.

while you were studying girls i was kissing the blade

who is laios

"I cant draw" then do it bad who gives a fuck.....

Partake in the joy of creation just for the fun of it. Just for a laff.

Me @everyone in the notes

the results are in

every autistic person watching this episode of dungeon meshi:

Chimera Falin || Dungeon Meshi 1x17

had an au thought and ran with it o/

I have been waiting all year to post this.

omg

This has been in my queue for months.

I missed it last year and I vowed that would NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

YES

omg i didnt reblog this last year!

The Day is here. :)

I strongly prefer it when the Scions *don't* have Ancient counterparts.

I think it means more if they're part of the new souls born to the star either after Zodiark's first summoning or after the Sundering. Which is a whole thing!

Importantly, those were the souls that the Convocation were going to sacrifice to Zodiark to bring back the Ancients they lost.

To me, I think it's vastly important that G'raha, Y'shtola, Urianger, Thancred, the twins, that all of them are people Emet-Selch would throw away without a second thought. That to him, you're the only one worth half a damn... And broken as you are, only half a damn. And before he lets himself accept that you really are what's left of Azem, you're just someone else he's convinced isn't a person.

But I think these are the very souls Azem left the Convocation to save, even if Azem still didn't want to break the world. And these are the souls that Venat and the Twelve did break the world to save.

To me that's so much more important than any reincarnation romance (much as I adore that kind of story too). That to Azem and to you, these people matter anyway.

for as much as I love and adore stories where the power of hope and friendship is a blinding wonderful light, full of happiness and ease and laughter, something hits different about the way hope, in ffxiv, looks like this

covered in blood and dirt and limping forward. It’s probably been said multiple times before but isn’t it a reassuring image to know that hope drags itself through the mud just as much as you do and keeps fighting when it can hardly stand. and amidst deepest despair, light everlasting

I lived and worked in a lighthouse at a previous job.  There was a thick line painted in a circle around the shack where the fog signal was kept.  The line represented how close you could get to the fog signal without experiencing physical harm in the form of eardrums shattering or worse.

Even in the house it was LOUD.  Probably the loudest thing I have ever experienced but at a normal, predictable interval.  You would begin to time your sentences with little pauses with the rest of the lighthouse crew so you would talk like this while making your………..HORN…………. tea and then carry on talking because you knew when it would go off.  It rattled the walls and the dishes in our cabinet.

At least one girl had died there. They kept photos of her everywhere “in honor of her sacrifice” because she had decided to take the winter watch alone and died in a storm where bounders the size of mini vans had been lifted out of the ocean and left scattered across the island, to say nothing of the ice chunks.  People weren’t allowed to be alone on the watch after that.

One day a dead moose washed up on shore and it took my entire crew all day but we managed to rig up a line to hang it up to dry because we thought having a moose skeleton in the house would really spice the living room up a bit.  It did.  Weird shit happens when six of you are left alone, like ALONE ALONE, no cell reception, no wifi, just a radio to contact the real world and not a lot of reason to do that.  People don’t go on lighthouse jobs if they want to stay connected, I’ve found.

That said Id do it all again, I really do treasure those days

you know you could’ve just said “no they don’t have wifi” and that would’ve answered the question

But then you wouldnt have known about the moose

my biggest pet peeve in the world is when landlubbers design cool fantasy pirate cabins but completely forget that they’re on a fucking boat. yeah here’s a loose shelf with 50 glass bottles of rum on the top shelf. no there isn’t any sort of guard on the edge. “yeah sorry cap’n we hit One Wave a little weird and every single glass item you own crashed into the ground at once”