Finally, the singularity has happened.

  • einkorn@feddit.org
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    1 month ago

    As is tradition. The first image transferred over the internet-precursor was also a cat picture.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Hah, that’s interesting. I tried looking up to see if that’s true, but I’m not finding any reliable sources, only sites and articles talking about the first message sent on ARPANET.

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I imagine the first image file would’ve come well after the first text transmission, and would’ve required the development of a binary file transfer protocol. Maybe they’re talking about XMODEM and the BBS era, before those BBSes were eventually networked onto the internet.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They keep reiterating “faster, faster”. But the discussion is “laser” vs. “radio”.

    Surprise: both travel at the speed of light. Both are the same speed.

    Hmmm.

    Are they afraid of having to explain “bandwidth”?

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      When talking communication, most people think of the speed with which a unit quantity of information is transmitted, not the latency of that transmission.
      Referring to bandwidth as the speed of a communication system is pretty normal, even for people who know how to use the term bandwidth.

      • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        people think of […] not the latency of that transmission.

        And when that latency goes up from a few millis (from google to you) to, let’s say, 10 minutes (from mars to earth), then they would start to notice it :)

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Oh, certainly. But common language has a term for high latency already, it’s just not speed related. Everyone knows about a laggy connection on a phone or video call.

          Fun fact: TCP has some implicit design considerations around the maximum cost of packet retransmission on a viable link that only works on roughly local planetary scale.
          When NASA started to get out to Mars with the space Internet, they needed to tweak tcp to fit retransmission being proportionally much more expensive and let connections live longer before being “broken”.

        • Cenotaph@mander.xyz
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          1 month ago

          True, but with the speed of light being constant as far as we know worrying about it is sort of a moot point

    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      It is how “fast” they can transfer x amount of information. Not how fast the material being used to encode information can move through space.

    • JasonDJ
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      1 month ago

      That’s like saying that a Camaro isn’t any faster than a PT Cruiser because the law says 65mph.