[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?
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