Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1
The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.
So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.
So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.
Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.
And the probe is working again.
From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.
I know "60s housewives who invented slash fanfiction" has taken on a life of its own as a phrase, but Kirk/Spock didn't really exist until the 70s and THOSE WOMEN HAD JOBS. They were teachers and librarians and bookkeepers and scientists and they damn well spent their own money going to conventions, printing zines, buying fanart and making fandom happen. Put some respect on their names.
The "If you were over 6 feet tall and living in Wellington in 2001 you didn't have a choice my dude" is killing me, like I'm just picturing the LOTR casting directors running around Wellington with a measuring tape, black-bagging tall guys and shoving them into vans.
"You're a Lord of the Rings extra now."
"No! Please! I have a family! I'm supposed to work the closing shift at the Pita Pit tonight!"
"You serve at the pleasure of the Steward of Gondor now."
Okay, you know what? After reading this post, I jokingly said we should all just make a pact to reblog it five times a day forever. So I'm gonna do this louder for the people in the back:
AO3 WAS CREATED BY FANS, FOR FANS
AO3 IS RUN BY FANS (VOLUNTEERS, NO LESS)
AO3 IS PART OF THE NON-PROFIT, ORGANIZATION FOR TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS
AO3 IS NOT OWNED BY ANY COMPANIES AND DOES NOT EARN REVENUE
Her name was Saly, she was five years old. She was like any child, she probably liked to play with her toys, she was probably learning to read, she probably like to spend time with her family and friends.
Maybe she would have been a doctor, or a farmer, or a engineer. Maybe she would have advanced the field of physics or medicine, written a best seller novel or stared in a major movie production; Or she might have had a quieter life, the world might have never known her name, but her friends and family would have and that might have been enough.
But no one will ever know now because Israel took those lives away from her, the tens of thousands of possibles that lay before each child burning like candle lights in cool summer night sniffed out in an instant. A last story shared by thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.