395
A 1977 Time Capsule, Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
(techfixated.com)
Hopefully it doesn't get blown up by some bored Klingon.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
395 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
83195 readers
2969 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In 1977 69 KB was huge memory. First home PC's from 1980 and 1981 like ZX81 they have 1 KB of memory. One.
Aliens find it and love our retro tech. "8 track!"
aliens arrive on Earth with a brutal message of aggression:
"Puny Earthlings! We have surpassed your pathetic 8-track technology and have invented... 9-track tapes! Cower before our might!"
Funny observation on the side:
This content is geoblocked in Germany.
And, as far as I can tell, trying a few destinations with my VPN: only in Germany...
So what the hell is in there, that we Germans must not see???? 😆
You already know too much, ja?
l would say there is more advanced information tech in 70s era Voyager than in a typical current German public administration office. ;-)
Maybe they really couldn't be bothered with writing an Impressum!
Impressum would only be a necessity if they were targeting the German market, which they (as an English language only site) are clearly not.
I meant it as a joke but I could imagine them getting one email from Germany about GDPR and then deciding to geoblock the whole country instead of complying (and ignoring the fact it applies elsewhere in Europe too).
By now I am curious enough that I consider just writing them a mail and ask...
Edit:
Just did. Will post if they give me an answer...
So france, austria, works? Else, if europe, it could be not wanting to comply with GDPR. Or germnay has a few extra rules they don't like.
Edit: Switzerland works, but maybe because IP ranges aren't that exact.
Had been thinking the same at first.
But France and Austria did work. Only Germany was blocked.
Only thing that is unique to Germany I can think of is the hate speech laws that are very specific towards Nazi symbolism and Holocaust treatment.
Maybe they had some article (or comments from users...) once that collided with that and decided to just block Germany to make their life less stressful.
Fear of change and modernization. :)
😆
It's blocked on the server side, though... (nginx message).
Maybe some German "Neuland" shenanigans the page owner doesn't want to be exposed to ...
It’s a slippery slope. If you let the village know there’s a ship sailing the cosmos then next thing you know they’ll want the rathaus to use email instead of fax. Just best to follow the rules and keep things the way they are.
It and its sibling are probably the only working examples of flywire memory left in existence. That memory with little ferrite cores threaded with 3 wires was very labour intensive to make but was the backbone of the entire computing industry at the time. Very solid and reliable.
A kilobyte must have sounded like so much memory back then.
A byte is 8 bits. Even if we want to call bits quarters ($0.25) and bytes dollars, 69KB would be $69,000! That's a lot of dollars.
(And it's actually 1,024 or something instead of 1,000, which just increases it that much more).
It's crazy how KBs used to be incredibly meaningful, and now we're buying multi-TB drives like they're nothing!
buying multi-TB drives like they’re nothing!
😭
Well...up until recently
Last year, I bought a 22TB hard drive to recover from a 17TB drive failure. I barely got my wife to agree to the one drive, and simply could not convince her that we should get a backup. Our compromise was that I'd add a category to our budget with a year-long goal for a new hard drive. On Friday, I bought my new hard drive after wiping out the category, cashing some old bonds, and borrowing some money from a friend who also uses my server. I wanna fucking cry...
I was alive when computer RAM was measured in MB, not GB. Yes, I am an old codger
I was alive when computer RAM was measured in KB and when you wanted to have more of it, you had to manually solder it to the main board... Youngling.
Wouldn't a byte be $2 if a bit was a quarter, or do you mean 2 bits are a quarter? Also i think you were right to use powers of 10 in your estimate. Article says kilobyte, not kibibyte. I really like what your conversion illustrates, I'm just tripping up on the details. I could be wrong-- commenting so someone can correct me if i am-- if a bit is a quarter, 69 Kilobytes would be $138,000
Nice
Nice
Ice
adj.
…
- Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle.
Link gives me a 403 error
Yep, same for me...
Its hard to maintain a link with a craft outside or solar system. There's a very tight orientation requirement and you have to set a very large delay for the expected response.
Come on now, it's not that bad.
Voyager 1 is just 23h 32m 9.981s light seconds away.
One way.
It takes me about a day to respond to messages too. Therefore I'm also ~23 light hours away.
So slightly better ping than my ISP, then.
By some measures, it hasn't even left the solar system yet.
But 403 is "Forbidden".
So...
Leslie Nielsen?! Who does he play? The robot or the woman in the robots hands?
He plays "Commander Adams". It's been a while since I've seen it, but as I recall it's a pretty decent sci-fi movie. And it's the only serious role that I think I've ever seen him in.
He was a dramatic actor up until he did Airplane! That's one of the reasons he was cast in the role.
Surely you can’t be serious.
and don't call me Shirley
Yeah for a 60s sci fi movie it's pretty good
50s sci fi movie, actually.
Part of that groundbreaking film stuff starting in that decade, kicking off our modern understanding of the genre.
Twilight Zone also comes to mind.
Currently watching season 2 of it. Totally great stuff, so many "firsts" in there!
When I'm on a plane I still idly think about the possibility of there being a gremlin out there on the wing eating an engine...
(I fly a lot and even learned to fly gliders/sailplanes back in the day, so definitely not afraid of flying, but if I'm ever sat next to William Shatner I'm deplaning. No point taking chances. ;-).)
I have not seen this episode yet (it's in season 5, just checked).
Definitely looking forward to it!
We just watched the "Nick of time" episode not to long. Came as a surprise that Shatner was in there - it was kind of a culture shock for my son, suddenly seeing "Captain Kirk" as a superstitious groom in a 50s era dinner... :-)
Working again
Just tried it - still 403 for me.
Weird. Geoblocking maybe...? VPN blocking...?
Yes, definitely indentional geoblocking on server side.
Direct access from Germany is blocked.
Access via VPN from any other country works just fine (so no VPN blocking).