[HN Gopher] Mars becomes the 2nd planet that has more computers ... ___________________________________________________________________ Mars becomes the 2nd planet that has more computers running Linux than Windows Author : fireball_blaze Score : 655 points Date : 2021-02-19 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | cosmotic wrote: | It's almost as if, without a human using it, the GUI is no longer | a primary design goal. | Kuinox wrote: | This statement imply that you cant run a Windows without a GUI | which is false. Windows can run fine with 256MB RAM with no | display support. | spijdar wrote: | The point is that Windows' biggest advantage is its familiar | GUI. The trouble with Linux on the desktop (and in most small | business environments where the sysadmins only know how to | drive windows server with a full gui installed) is the Linux | GUI can kinda suck, and way more people are familiar with the | Windows GUI. | | Take away the GUI, and Linux becomes a pretty easy choice. | Kuinox wrote: | Windows biggest advantage is it's UX which the GUI is a | part of. | | "Take away the GUI, and Linux becomes a pretty easy choice. | " An external machine can become the GUI. It's not because | your machine can't render that it can't have an external | GUI. | | VSCode SSH is popular because it's able to bring a decent | GUI to any linux server. | orev wrote: | That's the party line, however Windows with no GUI is | extremely awkward to use, and most people just end up using | RSAT to interact with it, which is just running the GUI | remotely. | Kuinox wrote: | The purpose to not have a GUI is to be able to run on | lighter hardware. It doesnt mean you have to work without | GUI. | jfk13 wrote: | Although without display support the name "Windows" feels | rather odd. | ravenstine wrote: | I wonder why they used Linux? I'm not that familiar with | engineering at NASA or JPL, but I thought computers used in | exploration were running real-time operating systems. Is Linux | capable of this? | mvh wrote: | I worked at NASA Armstrong for a summer. The have an entire | team there that at least a few years ago worked full time on | real time Linux. IDK if that was used in this case or not. | jagger27 wrote: | The helicopter uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, which doesn't | appear to be radiation hardened. I'm guessing their usual BAE | RAD750 PowerPC rad hardened CPU was too heavy to put on the | helicopter. | zaphod12 wrote: | another thread noted that the hardened CPU was not fast | enough to do the required sensor fusion and responses. In the | case of a severe fault, the 801 can be restarted fast enough | (while in mid flight!) to not crash the vehicle. | abfan1127 wrote: | apparently list price for the RAD750 is $200,000! could you | not externally harden the snapdragon for less? | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | That's not how hardening chips works. | | You need a specialized fab manufacturing, etching and | packaging process for this and it's not like regular fabs | are cheap to begin with. Plus you're working from the start | with much larger nodes with dedicated cell libraries so | everything has to be designed from scratch to fit that node | which means you can't reuse consumer off the shelf designs | very easily. | | Then there's the lack of economies of scale in building | such custom parts in small numbers. I imagine if Apple | would only order 100 5nm chips per year from TSMC, the unit | price would be equally eye watering. | abfan1127 wrote: | I've only read this doc quickly [1]. I would have guessed | a lead case of a particular thickness would do the trick. | But I don't know the thickness needed, maybe too much? | | [1] https://nepp.nasa.gov/files/25295/MRS04_LaBel.pdf | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | In theory you could just cover everything in lead and | call it a day, _IF_ , lead wouldn't also be one of the | heaviest metals in the world, which kinda goes against | the mantra of space travel. | monadic5 wrote: | Lead coating a critical and embedded component like a | CPU, or even a SOC, has gotta be barely significant for | the weight of the payload. | | I'm guessing the faster CPU is just not necessary for the | core rover, so via KISS, use the proven chips. | dylan604 wrote: | yeah, but it'd only be 3/8 as heavy on Mars! | | seriously, that's something I haven't thought much about. | when designing rovers, do they calculate solely on the | weight of what it will be on the destination, or limit it | to weight limits of escaping earth's gravity well? | bdamm wrote: | It's not just the mechanical weight at the destination | and the work required to escape earth's gravity (which is | enormous). Mass of the rover also means more fuel to | speed up and slow down if there is any delta-V changes | en-route, the heat energy that needs to be dissipated | during re-entry, the forces on parachute and lander as | well. So really, that mass penalty gets paid over and | over... and not often linearly. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | Weight on board the rocket is the most important | consideration as payload weigh is the limiting factor. | 0xffff2 wrote: | Ha, if you think that's a lot, I've got some news for you. | That might be the price for just the CPU, but the price for | the avionics package (basically a RAD750 with the necessary | boards to manage power and IO) is a whole lot more than | that. (I'm probably not allowed to name the exact number, | but you're going to need to add a zero for sure.) | abfan1127 wrote: | no way I'd be surprised by it. When you only sell 4-5 a | year, its going to be pricey! | pantalaimon wrote: | The Helicopter is also not operated in space, so radiation | might be less of an issue. It's intended only as a flight | demo anyway. | baybal2 wrote: | More likely just too power hungry | zokier wrote: | I think the primary reason is that Ingenuity is not | considered essential part of the main mission, so they could | use non-qualified COTS parts like Snapdragon and Linux. | janderland wrote: | When I worked on military autonomous vehicles (which I'd expect | to be similar to these) we always had at least two system on | board: 1) A real-time flight controller, 2) One or more Linux | computers, networked via an on-board LAN which performed all | the other tasks. | senden9 wrote: | I worked with some people of that particular JPL software | team to setup a similar setup like the Mars helicopter for a | earth UAV. | | Can confirm that multiple real time systems are used. They | are controlled by a non real time Linux system. | kashyapc wrote: | Real-time Linux is a thing, although it was maintained | separately, outside mainline Linux, for a long time. About | 4-ish years ago, the project got some decent funding and is now | part of Linux Foundation: | | https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/real-time-linux-cont... | peter303 wrote: | VxWorks has been battletested in NASA space probes for over 30 | years. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_embedded_compute... | | I recall an early bug in the 2004 MERS duo. They were the first | to use flash memory and its new drivers. The file freelist | busted and the OS kept on rebooting. Fortunately a fix was | uploaded from Earth. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(rover)#Sol_17_flash_me... | a-dub wrote: | the pathfinder also had a priority inversion bug resulting in | deadline trips. same story, they patched it... | Darkphibre wrote: | Fun read, tyvm! I loved this anecdote from the second link: | | > On sol 20, the command team sent it the command | SHUTDWN_DMT_TIL ("Shutdown Dammit Until") to try to cause it | to suspend itself until a given time. | | > | | > It seemingly ignored the command. | redis_mlc wrote: | The description "real-time" varies in meaning depending on the | application and acceptable average and maximum latency. | | The un-informed usually thinks "real-time" means "hard real- | time", but that's seldom necessary, so one can save on | additional expense and effort by using a regular linux distro | and removing most of the daemons and file location indexing. | | I've done real-time development (for Space Shuttle, rocket and | balloon projects), and largely all I care about is if a | circular buffer can be emptied in time before it fills. That's | one technique for avoiding latency variation issues. | | The versions of linux that you would normally encounter aim for | music real-time, which is about 10 ms latency. 30 ms is | considered to be bad. | | Most of the pro Yamaha synths use linux as the embedded OS, and | some of the code is downloadable (they attempt to comply with | the letter of the GPL.) So you can go down to Guitar Center and | do a real-time test anytime yourself. :) | | The iPhone is pretty good for music, because it was designed to | have low latency when playing. | | https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later... | | https://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency | | Looks like Wind River discontinued RTLinux, which was hard | real-time (a real shame actually, as it removes one of the few | hard real-time options): | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTLinux | codetrotter wrote: | The Akai MPC X and its siblings run Linux too. Based on | buildroot according to someone that looked into it. | | https://niklasnisbeth.gitlab.io/mpc-internals/ | | However I don't remember the GPL being mentioned anywhere | when I had my MPC X. I sold it recently because of not having | any money. But I hope to own one again in the future. If I | ever do have one again I will probably have a closer look at | what it says about the GPL, and then try and get a copy of | all of the open source portions of the firmware directly from | Akai. | Darkphibre wrote: | As someone that worked at Microsoft on the XAudio 2 for the | Xbox 360 & Windows Phone stacks... holy heck that android | audio path is painful to read. >.<;; | | We went with a 5.33ms quantum on the Xbox 360 (vs. Window's | 10ms), and tried to stay out of the way as much as possible | to ensure minimal latencies: https://docs.microsoft.com/en- | us/windows/win32/xaudio2/xaudi... | nashashmi wrote: | Microsoft is the master of wait and see approach. There not great | at being first. But they are great at competing. | mitjak wrote: | Internet Explorer on mars gogogo | underseacables wrote: | Probably because it's cheaper and less prone to malicious | interference. | rsj_hn wrote: | This sounds like an old slashdot headline | xtracto wrote: | From the open-source-alien-robot-overlords department. | xenophonf wrote: | Following reports of a new alien war machine in the ancient | Fal'leesh river delta, K'breel, speaker for the Council, | stressed that again, there was no cause for alarm: | | "This is the last, futile gesture of the disease-ridden apes | that foul the sinister blue planet third from our star. We | will persevere, no matter the risks, no matter the costs. Our | gelsacs swell with pride at the thought of the Enemy's | inevitable self-immolation augered by their fitful attempts | to travel among the stars." | | When Junior Reporter #AXI-1138 of the Celestial News Network | attempted to ask the Speaker whether there was any truth to | reports of the machine's successful landing, activation, and | telemetry transmissions, K'breel called it fake news and | ritualistically crushed the reporter's gelsacs with the | lectern's Bhan'ammer. | dfilppi wrote: | That we know of | xyst wrote: | How do they issue updates to the system on mars? | shmerl wrote: | May be they can first upload something to an orbiter, and then | use it as a secondary source for updates for the computers on | the planet? | dhritzkiv wrote: | Orbital Content Delivery Network | vesinisa wrote: | With data uplink? Same way as your mobile phone gets system | updates (OTA). | xyst wrote: | Wonder what the speeds and delay/latency is like? Did they | achieve near theoretical limits of light between earth and | mars, or was it a different transport layer? | | Would love to one day communicate with a person on another | planet. Maybe this is something 3 or 4 generations from now | will be able to do. | giantrobot wrote: | The latency is anywhere from ~5 to ~20 minutes depending on | the distance between Earth and Mars at the time. As for | bandwidth, there's a couple different answers. Perseverance | has two X-band transceivers, one with a high-gain antenna | and one with a lower gain omni-directional antenna. It's | also got a UHF transceiver it can use to relay | communications through the MRO and MAVEN orbiters. | | The direct X-band transceivers are pretty low bandwidth and | are mainly used for rover telemetry. They're low bandwidth | because the the antennas are relatively small and the | radios aren't super high powered. It takes the 35 and 70 | meter dishes of the Deep Space Network just to receiver and | send signals to them. The high gain X-band radio (~8GHz) | can downlink to Earth at between 160 and 800 bps (yes | _bits_ per second) and uplink between 500 to 3000 bps. The | low gain radio is mostly receive only and can uplink | between 10 and 30 bps. That 's enough for densely packed | telemetry data and administration commands. | | The UHF (~400MHz) transceiver talks to either the MRO and | MAVEN orbiters. Because that link is pretty short range | (200-300km) it's much higher bandwidth. The rover can | uplink to the orbiters at about 2Mbps. MRO (I'm not sure | about MAVEN) is able to downlink to Earth between 500Kbps | and 6Mbps depending on the distance between Earth and Mars. | Typically the rover will send its mission data (images, | sensor data, etc) to an orbiter while its overhead which | will buffer it and then relay it to Earth when its view of | Earth is the clearest. MRO and MAVEN complete multiple | orbits per sol (Martian day) so there's several | opportunities for the rover to upload its mission data and | get it back to Earth. | | All the radio signals travel at the speed of light but the | distance is what affects the latency. Mars and Earth are | many tens of millions of kilometers apart so it just takes | a while, even at the speed of light, to cross that | distance. Communicating with another person on Mars would | be more like sending each other voicemail messages than | anywhere close to a real-time conversation. | jandrese wrote: | It's radio waves. I'm not sure what other transport layers | you are expecting to use between Earth and Mars. | | The latency is measured in minutes. Obviously something | like TCP won't work. Typically they would use something | like DTN. | | https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/engineering/tech | n... | | Edit: Corrected hours to minutes. Brainfart on my part. | [deleted] | vesinisa wrote: | The bandwidth is pretty good, considering those super high | res photos they send back. There's space in between, and | Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so you can communicate | with radio quite well I'd bet. | | Latency is indeed a major issue, it's about 11.5 minutes | per direction. The newest rover actually has some A.I. for | that reason to let it drive autonomously and not always | have to wait for next commands from Earth. | bluGill wrote: | Latency might be 11.5 minutes now (I didn't check, but | I'll believe it), but it ranges between about 2 minutes | and about 20 minutes depending on how the earth/mars | orbits line up. | gigel82 wrote: | Very slowly, given the bandwidth is about 3Kbps (https://mars.n | asa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...) | ornornor wrote: | Latency must be crazy too. | wiml wrote: | 1374311 millisecond ping time right now | 867-5309 wrote: | so roughly Wellington to Reykjavik | jandrese wrote: | I'm a bit surprised the Rover talks directly to Earth for the | high speed data transfer. I would have expected a large dish | in Martian orbit being used to relay the signal down to the | rover's relatively tiny high gain antenna. Even when you | account for the fact that the satellite will only be overhead | part of the time the link budget calculation would be | enormously different. | lights0123 wrote: | They do, from the link in the comment you replied to: | | > Most often, Mars 2020 uses its ultra-high frequency (UHF) | antenna (about 400 megahertz) to communicate with Earth | through NASA's orbiters around Mars. Because the rover and | orbiter antennas are within close range of each other, they | act a little like walky-talkies compared to the long-range | telecommunications with Earth provided by the low-gain and | high-gain antennas. | lights0123 wrote: | Where'd you get that? | | > The mass- and power-constrained rover can achieve high data | rates of up to 2 megabits per second on the relatively short- | distance relay link to the orbiters overhead. The orbiters | then use their much larger antennas and transmitters to relay | that data on the long-distance link back to Earth. | | > Transmission Rates Up to 2 megabits per second on the | rover-to-orbiter relay link. | | And using DSN Now, we can also see that the speed from Earth | to those orbiters is also 2Mbps. | shakna wrote: | The Rover-to-Orbiter is 2Mbps, whereas the X-Band High-Gain | Antenna link is 3Kbps: | | > 160/500 bits per second or faster to/from the Deep Space | Network's 112-foot-diameter (34-meter-diameter) antennas or | at 800/3000 bits per second or faster to/from the Deep | Space Network's 230-foot-diameter (70 meter-diameter) | xyst wrote: | Wow! it's a flashback to the dial up days. Still impressive. | Look forward to when we are able to advance this technology. | typon wrote: | I torrented GTA Vice City at a similar speed when I was | young. I'm sure NASA has that level of patience. | raziel2701 wrote: | Is Limewire running on the rover? I hope they don't | download an update and it turns out it's a dragon ball amv | with a linkin park soundtrack. | imbnwa wrote: | They're running Kazaa so there's a risk an update | involves horses (yes, LimeWire and Kazaa were both | Gnutella consumers) | whatshisface wrote: | sudo apt upgrade --high-gain | [deleted] | nom wrote: | Here [0] is the paper describing the hardware of Ingenuity in | more detail | | Things that stand out to me: It uses mostly off-the-shelf | electronic components that are only automotive/industrial grade! | - 2.26 GHz Quad-core SnapdragonTM 801 - Texas | InstrumentsTMS570LC43x (2x for tolerance) - Sony 18650 LiIon | batteries - Zig-Bee to communicate with the rover | | The only part that is somewhat special is the radiation tolerant | FPGA ProASIC3 that ties everything together and takes care of | power cycling other components when they lock up. | | Too bad that they probably will only fly it a few times as the | rover has to move on and it's just a tech demo. I so wish it will | follow Perseverance on it's mission, that would be so awesome to | see. It's certainly capable of doing that! | | 0: | https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/46229/CL%2317... | ognarb wrote: | Also it is partially powered by KDE4 :) | https://twitter.com/ivan_cukic/status/1362722727560425476 | tibbydudeza wrote: | They still using VxWorks for the lander and rover ???. | ngngngng wrote: | I can't help but imagine the rover crash landing on Mars due to a | forced windows system update that wasn't able to be delayed. | blackrock wrote: | I bet the Linux desktop GUI still sucks. | | We need a new model. | young_unixer wrote: | The GPL will soon infect the whole galaxy. | wiz21c wrote: | Please stop using the word "infect" when talking about GPL. | Infect is a negatively biased term. It's not balanced regarding | the benefits GPL software brought to many people. | meetups323 wrote: | `Infect` accurately describes a particular view of GPL. This | is akin to saying "please stop holding that opinion, it it | doesn't match my own opinion, therefore you shouldn't hold it | either" | orra wrote: | A term can be technically accurate, but biased because of | its connotations. "Infect" has incredibly negative | connotations. Why not say cross pollinate? | | Recently in the UK we have pundits talking about migrants | as "infection vectors". This dehumanisation of humans | coincides with the government illegally and immorally | banning asylum seekers. | munk-a wrote: | I think there's a real difference with this usage | compared to "infection vectors" as used by pundits - | everyone in the UK is an infection vector and migrants | aren't particularly more likely to be infected than any | other travelers[1] so their usage is a clear mis- | attribution intended to slander a class of people. I | also, honestly, will tend to give a lot more benefit of | the doubt to slander when it comes to living breathing | humans compared to software licenses but I'm trying to | suppress that in this line of discussion. | | 1. As far as what I've seen reported. | meetups323 wrote: | The bias is the point. It's expressing an opinion. This | isn't a government scientific report where the language | should be as devoid of emotion as possible, this is an | internet chatboard. Expressing opinions is the whole | point. | jcelerier wrote: | > Expressing opinions is the whole point. | | To say I was thinking it was about actual arguments the | whole time | 0xBA5ED wrote: | Would you need an argument to support it if it wasn't | opinion? | jcelerier wrote: | ... yes ? That's how debate works | orra wrote: | This is progress: previously you were pretending the term | "infect" is neutral. | | People are entitled to opinions, but we're entitled to | call out negative ones. | meetups323 wrote: | > previously you were pretending the term "infect" is | neutral. | | Nope. | | I said "`Infect` accurately describes a particular view | of GPL." | | This is true, and it says nothing about that point of | view being neutral. In fact, quite the opposite. | choeger wrote: | I think the usage of the term tells you something about the | managers that use(d) it: For them it was really like an | infection. Their developers came in contact with that free | software and all of a sudden their big enterprise corp had | legal obligations. It must have come as a real surprise that | enforceable licenses are not a one-way road from enterprises | to consumers. | danieka wrote: | Maybe we can say that GPL is contagious instead? | munk-a wrote: | Infect does have a negative connotation but I can't really | think of a non-negative term with the same viral connotations | and that side of the connotation is rather accurate. The GPL | aggressively applies itself to full code bases that adopt it | - it might actually be a bit more accurate to call it | cancerous I guess? | | At any rate it is a rather negative word but I don't think | it's fair to say that "infect" is a mis-categorization of the | behavior of the GPL. And all this from someone who does | personally appreciate MIT licenses more but is quite pro-GPL | licensing on code. | gralx wrote: | Please continue to use the word "infect" when talking about | GPL. It exhausts the energy of those who police usage of words | by perceived connotation, an activity that distracts from and | interrupts fruitful discussion of more meaningful topics. | Exhausting their energy is beneficial to us all. | 7952 wrote: | May that is how the economy in star trek universe came about. | majkinetor wrote: | Big surprise waiting for aliens that plan to steal the tech and | modify it for its own purposes... without publishing their | changes on Earth :) | mannerheim wrote: | They only have to publish the source code to people who | receive a copy of a binary. | bluGill wrote: | Only if their legal system recognizes earth copyrights. | They have no reason to do that. | hinkley wrote: | We steal genes from fungi without rewarding them for | their work, and do you know what they do to silk worms? | Why should advanced aliens treat us any better? | TaylorAlexander wrote: | The IMF will offer them big loans with the stipulation | that they "harmonize" their legal codes to include IP | restrictions. | munk-a wrote: | It's alright - the Trans-Galactic Partnership Treaty has | been confirmed and all the signatories agreed to | unilaterally include all unsigned lifeforms in the | Galaxy. Honestly if these folks wanted a better deal they | should've come to the table. | m4rtink wrote: | Hmm, what about systems with just single star type object | or more than two ? Sure, there migh be more binary star | systems in the galaxy than the others but it still seems | like a significant unaddressed edge case. | eggy wrote: | That's why we sent GPL software. It will destroy the alien | civilization from within! | munk-a wrote: | I suddenly want to read a SciFi novel about a lawyer | dispatched to Alpha Centauri as first contact to establish | that the radio signals emanating from their planet infringe | on Got to Give it Up by Marvin Gaye. Hey, if Snowpiercer can | get a Netflix series then this is a slam-dunk for green | lighting - let's serialize this while we're at it! | repsilat wrote: | > _There's no point in acting surprised about it. All the | source code has been on display at your local galactic | version control system in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth | years..._ | gostsamo wrote: | Yes, in a maze, with broken bulb, stolen staircase, and put | in a cupboard with a sign "danger! jaguar inside". | drdeadringer wrote: | I am reminded of the types of OSs in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness | Upon The Sky" universe. | Koshkin wrote: | For a second I read it as GNU Propulsion Laboratory. | foota wrote: | Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away: https://xkcd.com/344/ | [deleted] | majkinetor wrote: | Its also 2nd planet that has more machines then people :) | olex wrote: | The only planet completely populated by robots. | duxup wrote: | That we know of. | godelski wrote: | Venus is completely populated by dead robots | dylan604 wrote: | Is it though? Are the robots even recognizable as robots, | or have they totally melted into slag? | majkinetor wrote: | Exactly. | | The other machine adventures are not even on planets :) | odyssey7 wrote: | Wasn't it the first? | BurningFrog wrote: | I have a few dozen machines just in my apartment. | | Pretty sure we're outnumbered. | HenryBemis wrote: | Data from 2015: | https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/world-ip- | ad... | | IP Addresses per person. | | I think that by now (2015 --> 2021) and by making | smartphone data packages cheaper, we all have a couple of | IP addresses. Of course for anyone in an office, or behind | a home router, it may look like there is a single IP | address, while someone may have a smartphone, laptop, 1-2 | tablets, a smart TV. | | We are definitely outnumbered. | JBiserkov wrote: | Venus? | majkinetor wrote: | I doubt machine still lives in any form... | mc32 wrote: | More electric vehicles than ICEs, more EVs than bicycles too! | [deleted] | sand500 wrote: | The helicopter has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. That is probably | more powerful than the Perseverance's cpu" 200 MHz BAE RAD750. I | wonder if they could offload compute tasks to the helicopter. | ssijak wrote: | It is more powerful. But it has to fly in real time on its own. | Rover is on the ground and can do things more slowly without | penalty. | fudged71 wrote: | They will not. The helicopter is a side project that gets | abandoned after 30 days regardless of outcomes, the rover | drives away (presumably out of range) | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | That's because it was a helicopter and NASA didn't want it to | crash. | IshKebab wrote: | Quite a stale joke. I can't remember the last time Windows | crashed. Windows is probably more stable than Linux at this | point, at least from a kernel panic point of view. They do a | load of static analysis of drivers and can even reload GPU | drivers if they crash without taking down the whole system. | That's decades ahead of Linux. | Nailgun wrote: | I agree, I can't remember the last time windows crashed. My | home PC is a 2014 low-budget build and I don't recall any | blue screens of death or freezes. | | I often wonder if people run Windows on a potato to account | for all the crashes people seem to have. | bluGill wrote: | Anything NT based was a few orders of magnitude better than | the old Win 95 systems that gave windows a reputation for | crashing. That is what happens when you put some effort | into good design. Things have gotten better because | Microsoft has learned. Then again, everyone else has gotten | better now. | Kuinox wrote: | Sadly people are still buying crappy motherboard/laptop that | have crappy drivers and blame it on Windows. MSI ethernet | drivers sometimes trigger a memory leak that eat up all the | RAM in a few seconds. Dell thunderbolt docks are buggy and | trigger a BSOD. | WalterGR wrote: | It's funny because of the dual meaning of "crash." It's | possible that OP was not making a literal statement about the | reliability of Windows. | trynton wrote: | > .. I can't remember the last time Windows crashed .. | | Short-term memory loss ;] | jacquesm wrote: | I can't remember either because I'm trying very hard not to | have to use windows. | fasteddie31003 wrote: | They run Wind River distributions | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_River_Systems | valuearb wrote: | Ironically Mr Mars himself, Elon Musk, tried to get PayPal to | standardize on Windows NT. | KindOne wrote: | Context: https://www.allencheng.com/the-paypal-wars-summary- | pdf/ | gerash wrote: | What a pointless observation | randomsearch wrote: | at first it made me laugh, then it made me react like you, then | I thought - actually, why is that? And it's really an | incredible testament to the success of Linux. Started by a | student, built originally by volunteers contributing their | time. I feel like (for all its flaws) Linux is one of mankind's | great achievements and its deployment on another planet | underlines its success. | soheil wrote: | Can the rover mine some bitcoin and send it back to earth? Would | mars bitcoin be worth more than earth bitcoin? Since it's from | mars will it not have more sentimental value? | gwoplock wrote: | Alright, I'm going to be that guy. What's the other planet with | more Linux than Windows? | agloeregrets wrote: | Earth, with a broad definition of 'computer' you land on | cellphones too, Android (or even Tizen) is used on like 90% of | all new phones sold today worldwide. | | Edit: To be clear, I was noting the simple fact that many | probably don't at first think of an Android cellphone as a | computer. | davidw wrote: | Mobile phones are way more capable computers in every way but | the keyboard than the Commodore 64 I got my start with. | kragen wrote: | It's not a particularly broad definition of "computer". | | 32-bit and 64-bit cellphones are made of synchronous ICs at | gigahertz clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte- | oriented DRAM and superscalar multi-core ARM CPUs with | single-user GUIs displayed on an LCD running Linux and | software written in C, Java, and JS, plus a GPU running | OpenGL, storing their data on Flash, running on a few watts | of power and globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. They | have peripherals connected over USB and the SD card bus, and | also CSI. | | This 64-bit laptop is made of synchronous ICs at gigahertz | clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte-oriented DRAM | and a superscalar _amd64_ core running Linux with a single- | user GUI displayed on an LCD and software written in C, Java, | and JS, plus a GPU running OpenGL, storing its data on Flash | and spinning rust, running on a few watts of power and | globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP /IP. It has peripherals | connected over USB and the SD card bus, and also SATA. | | These are pretty much exactly the same. | | The definition of "computer" already has to be a _lot_ | broader than that to include both the 24-bit SDS 940 with 192 | kibibytes of magnetic cores and 96 megabytes of spinning | rust, with no GPU and analog video output hardware made out | of vacuum tubes and TV cameras, on top of the Berkeley | Timesharing System and serving six simultaneous users, on | which Engelbart demonstrated The Mother of All Demos in 1968, | and this laptop. | | It is transparently absurd to suggest that "computer" should | include both this laptop and the SDS 940 and its predecessors | like the IBM 1401 (decimal memory, punch card I/O, no | operating system, no multitasking, variable-length | instruction operands), but not cellphones. Compared to the | differences between the 1401 and my laptop, the differences | between my laptop and the cellphone are totally | insignificant. | | It is true that the vulgar and ignorant often do not | understand that their cellphones are computers. This allows | them to be more easily taken advantage of by companies that | want to reduce them to consumers instead of participants in | creating culture. Instead of aping their errors, we should | work to help them understand the true nature of things, | because ignorance is not a sin--it's a punishment. | | Because sunlight is the best disinfectant. | pen2l wrote: | > reduce them to consumers instead of participants in | creating culture | | But you miss the fact that the new generation making movies | and documentaries with these iPhones _is_ creating culture! | Leaving aside the distinction of computer /cellphone, the | iPhone is just a very powerful tool to the new generation, | and in some ways, they'd argue they can do more with it | than with a mere 'computer'! And, in taking down the | barriers of entry and making these computer cellphones | easier to use to create new content, one could well argue | culture has never before flourished as widely as it does | today. | kragen wrote: | I'm very aware of that, and I think the availability of | such powerful hand computers is a very important | development, one that changes many things and holds | enormous potential for improving the human condition. | That's one reason I think it's important who's in charge | of who gets to use these tools to speak, because that's | going to privilege certain voices and suppress others. | Suppressing too many voices leads to collectively | irrational decisions like the catastrophic mishandling of | the covid pandemic in America and Europe. | | I don't want hand computers to go away. I just want them | to be loyal to their owners, not to their manufacturers. | belltaco wrote: | Suddenly Android isn't Linux anymore when it comes to | discussing malware prevalence on Windows vs on Linux. | kpommerenke wrote: | I had to look this up: Android is based on the Linux kernel. | VWWHFSfQ wrote: | pretty sure it's earth by far | majkinetor wrote: | Not if you count regular house windows :) | orange_tee wrote: | Poor people in poor countries are way more likely to have | an Android phone than a Windows PC, or a PC at all for that | matter. | dewey wrote: | Windows, like in the rectangular shaped openings in your | wall. | musicale wrote: | Most computers on the Earth run Android (Linux kernel != Linux | distro) or iOS. | nabla9 wrote: | ahem. | | Linux kernel = Linux. | | Linux distro = GNU/Linux | webstrand wrote: | Alpine, for instance is a Linux distro, but is not GNU/Linux. | nabla9 wrote: | First we take Mars, then we take Desktop. | temp8964 wrote: | It sounds like there are Windows computers on Mars? | fireball_blaze wrote: | Where did you get that impression? | jimmaswell wrote: | There were presumably computers there before on the other | rovers. They either had Windows or a third OS or no OS | according to the title. | lights0123 wrote: | VxWorks, specifically. | jandrese wrote: | Given the relatively slow CPUs and limited memory on those | older rovers I would expect an embedded OS before Windows. | Think QNX or VxWorks, not Windows NT. | shmerl wrote: | No one wants to be in situation like this (: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP31lluUDWU&t=30 | peter303 wrote: | Perhaps when Russian or Chinese probes successfully land. They | are both notorious for "borrowing" US software. | phoe-krk wrote: | Not necessarily. Any positive integer is greater than zero. | soheil wrote: | Was that not already the case with prior missions to mars? Surely | no one has ever sent a rover to mars with Windows running on it. | codeulike wrote: | They sent one but it crashed because mission control were still | only halfway through reading the EULA when it reached Mars | after 8 months of flight. | fireball_blaze wrote: | The flight software and embedded systems framework for the | Ingenuity helicopter is called F' (pronounced F Prime) and is | open source. Find it here: | | https://github.com/nasa/fprime | BurningFrog wrote: | > _pronounced F Prime_ | | Some people _really_ hate Amazon! | eggy wrote: | f' the father of f# | igorstellar wrote: | or they are paying respecs | royaltjames wrote: | f | amself wrote: | or they are just taking the first derivative of f. who | knows, really! | soheil wrote: | or really dislike composite numbers | desine wrote: | which is likely a common operation in flight control | software ;-) | [deleted] | marianov wrote: | Prime as in Optimus lineage? Rover! Transform and roll out! | jbm wrote: | Tangentially related, but Optimus Prime has a drone - Roller. | | https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Roller_(G1) | [deleted] | jaywalk wrote: | That's the framework, but is the actual flight software open | source? I highly doubt it. | londons_explore wrote: | I don't see why it wouldn't be... | | It's not like NASA is worried someone else is going to steal | their software and send their own rover to mars using it... | jdminhbg wrote: | They might have licensed closed source components from | third party vendors that prevent them from open sourcing | the whole thing. | 0xffff2 wrote: | Maybe, but I doubt it. I'm currently working on another | NASA rover project (going to the Moon, not Mars) and we | don't use any third party code. Our code is based off of | another open source NASA project (Core Flight System), | but we don't open-source our exact flight software. | Mostly this is simply because we have to go through a | lengthy vetting process to ensure we don't | inappropriately release anything that falls under ITAR or | EAR, and we just don't have the extra time or budget for | it. | | Typically at NASA it's the more open-ended research | projects that have time and support for open sourcing | their code. There's less benefit in releasing a specific | rover's flight software than there is in releasing the | general framework that said software is based on. | mhh__ wrote: | Generally these things don't get open sourced. They really | should be in the long run but these things take time. | | Even Journals don't insist on code yet unfortunately. | drewzero1 wrote: | More likely, they may be worried someone is going to find a | vulnerability and take control of their multi-jillion- | dollar piece of equipment. | | At least in this case physical access is an extremely | improbable attack vector... | dheera wrote: | Reminds me of this: | | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48743043 | ampdepolymerase wrote: | If a third party can break into the satellite and | communications firmware of two different spacefaring | nations (you have to hijack an orbiter too) then there | are bigger problems to worry about. The number of | countries (counting the ESA as one big country) with | objects in orbit around Mars can be counted on one hand. | laurent92 wrote: | On the other hand, I'm not sure satellites launched years | ago have auto-upgrades enabled and up-to-date security | policies (and certificates!), especially upgrade policies | for the embedded chipsets. That must be an interesting | problem to solve. | mod wrote: | That occurred to me as well, but I imagine this is | separated from the communications. | | Maybe it's not controlled at all... it does say | autonomous, after all. | amself wrote: | I imagine all commands have to get signed for the rover | to accept them, but even if their keys were compromised | and some vulnerability was found in the software, | wouldn't you also need a network of really big dishes | (see DSN) to actually send the commands to the rover? | laurent92 wrote: | > Wouldn't you also need a big network of dishes | | Nah, you can subscribe to big-dishes-on-demand using AWS | Ground Station. | | Wait, they did exactly that: | https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ | | While some innovate, once again AWS reaps the margins of | the whole space conquest by discretely providing the | infrastructure that everyone needs. Clever! | folli wrote: | I honestly chuckled because of your AWS parody. | | Than I clicked the link... | amelius wrote: | But I'm curious, how many Intel, AMD, Nvidia, or Apple chips? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-19 23:00 UTC)