Comment on NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system

• wyyomin@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  No I get what you are saying, the thing is that the cosmic ray bit flip fits the razor. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray

  Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month.

  It isn’t unlikely for it to have happened on non-ECC hardware. I think they even replicated what happened in the video in an emulator with a single bit flip, so it really just boils down to “what are the chances someone recorded while a bit flip did something noteworthy”, and the odds are… pretty big actually, over so mamy years.

  To be honest I kinda suspect you’ve done no effort to fact check this but are just going with your gut feeling? I don’t mind discussing this further, but if so I’d really like to hear what your point is, because if it is that: a) cosmic bit flips doesn’t happen or b) a bit flip couldn’t have impacted the game like that then I think you’re better off watching that video I linked or actually read up on the subject because my impression is that if you apply occam’s razor to that mario64 incident… a bit flip is all that’s on the table.

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  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No I get what you are saying, the thing is that the cosmic ray bit flip fits the razor.

    It does not, because there's plenty of simpler and much more likely explanations than that.

    I think they even replicated what happened in the video in an emulator with a single bit flip

    You think. But they didn't. They replicated something that fairly looked close, but not the same. If it was a bit flip, it would have been reproducible in the exact same way. You can see this very example being done in the other video someone linked here, disproving your entire argument.

    To be honest I kinda suspect you've done no effort to fact check this but are just going with your gut feeling?

    And I suspect you're projecting. You watched a video that was spreading the myth and are now hell bent on believing it to be the cause, because you want to, rejecting any other explanation.

    I don't mind discussing this further, but if so I'd really like to hear what your point is, because if it is that:
    a) cosmic bit flips doesn't happen
    or
    b) a bit flip couldn't have impacted the game like that
    then I think you're better off watching that video I linked or actually read up on the subject because my impression is that if you apply occam's razor to that mario64 incident... a bit flip is all that's on the table.

    You clearly still miss the point, making me personally not wanting to discuss this further. I know that cosmic bit flips happen, but I also know that the example you're talking about isn't caused by a cosmic ray bit flip. It is way more likely that it is caused by some faulty hardware issue than a cosmic ray hitting it exactly at that moment causing exactly this outcome.

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