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. ;-)
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.
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…
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.
Nice
Link gives me a 403 error
Yep, same for me…
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).
Aliens find it and love our retro tech. “8 track!”
Why 8 tracks? They always sucked, even when they were in their prime. Cassettes were always the far superior format in every way.
The only advantage an 8 track might have is that it was on a loop, so it would repeat by being on a single hub, and, spooling out from the center, and regathering on the outside. That required a dry lubricant on the back of the tape, that would eventually wear off, and the tape would jam up. It was even more prevalent with longer than average albums, like double albums (White Album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, etc.).
I guarantee that that 8-track loop jammed up decades ago.
The “8 Track” in Voyager is not your standard 8 track, it’s a DTR and is arranged differently than the consumer tape cartridge for music. It was shut down about a decade ago, not because it was failing, but because of the power requirements.
FWIW, 8 tracks were pretty good sound for the time. Previously there was no portable music unless you brought a record player with you. They got passed up quickly by the cassette, though.
So theres not enough magnetism out there to negatively affect the recordings?
In 1977 69 KB was huge memory. First home PC’s from 1980 and 1981 like ZX81 they have 1 KB of memory. One.
The Commodore 64 came out in 1982 and famously had 64KB of memory.
Commodore VIC-20 came out in 1980 with 20KB as well.
20KB of ROM and 5KB of RAM, though that was expandable!
5KB of RAM
TIL! I’ve been living a lie for decades thinking the 20 in VIC-20 was the amount of RAM like the 64 in C64 meant the amount of RAM. I only owned the C64, never a VIC-20.
And they got further and accomplished more than all the AI companies, combined, have done [with the TiBs of data].
If we wanted to impress the aliens, we should have sent MiniDiscs, even if it meant delaying the mission a little while.
