[HN Gopher] The first email from space [video]
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       The first email from space [video]
        
       Author : world2vec
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2024-02-06 23:27 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | Brajeshwar wrote:
       | "Hasta la vista, baby"
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasta_la_vista%2C_baby
        
       | yabones wrote:
       | It's incredibly funny that despite the sophisticated high-
       | bandwidth data channels available to them, they ended up using a
       | half-duplex modem connection to a custom ground station. It still
       | feels like our world is full of hacks like that, maybe more than
       | ever -- "stupid", and shouldn't work, but _do_.
        
       | HPsquared wrote:
       | I wonder if Starlink is accessible from the ISS using a stock
       | modem. Probably not.
       | 
       | Edit: maybe they could use the laser links?
        
       | soneil wrote:
       | A bit of a tangent, but I'm surprised to hear that Clinton was
       | the first sitting president to send an email, in 1998. The Queen
       | sent her first in 1976, which is quite a gap.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | '76 is really early. I'd be curious about the circumstances.
         | [Apparently a photo op at a military research base.] Ray
         | Tomlinson at BBN was credited with sending the first email in
         | 1971 and, other than a few chat messages, I wasn't sending
         | email until a fair bit later.
         | 
         | National Archives say that Bill Clinton had a public-facing
         | email address in 1993 and that was probably around the time
         | that (some) normal people were starting to get addresses and
         | sending email.
        
           | cogman10 wrote:
           | '98, on the other hand seems really late for sending an
           | email. America was online at that point. In fact, in '98 the
           | concept of email was so ubiquitous that we got "You've got
           | mail" [1] as a movie.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ve_Got_Mail
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | A lot of people had AOL dialup. I probably had (personal)
             | broadband by then but not by more than a year or two.
             | 
             | In any case I'm not sure whatever photo-ops heads of state
             | choose to do says a lot beyond something some advisor
             | pitched to them.
        
               | cogman10 wrote:
               | > In any case I'm not sure whatever photo-ops heads of
               | state choose to do says a lot beyond something some
               | advisor pitched to them.
               | 
               | IDK about the 76 email by the queen, but by the time the
               | 90's rolled around I would have thought that electronic
               | communications would have been pretty advantageous.
               | Having everything printed out and hand delivered just
               | seems like a waste of time. Particularly for something as
               | large as the executive branch where there are so many
               | secretaries that need to communicate.
               | 
               | Heck, DHS was primarily pitched and founded because of
               | the 9/11 communication breakdown. I have to wonder how
               | much of that was due to the fact that communications were
               | papers flying around everywhere.
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | In the early 90s--and even into the mid--at a _computer
               | hardware company_ there were still execs who had their
               | admins take care of all that stuff. There was a big
               | mindset to break, probably mostly with a new generation,
               | for many senior people in the computer industry. (To be
               | clear, most people used email all the time--initially
               | internal and then external as well over time.)
        
         | hx8 wrote:
         | President of The United States has a reputation of being a low-
         | tech job. The level of security around him means all electronic
         | devices he uses have gone through the wringer of best in class
         | "cyber security."
         | 
         | While '98 feels a bit late Clinton was in office between
         | '93-'00. This sounds like the timeframe e-mail became a
         | critical part of daily life.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-08 23:01 UTC)