4 ms·

I don't know why, but I imagine a situation where all communication has broken down, and the only working sensor is the one in the piss-tank, and the astronauts

I don't know why, but I imagine a situation where all communication has broken down, and the only working sensor is the one in the piss-tank, and the astronauts have to communicate in morse by modulating the delta in the tank. And some guy with ADHD, and this menu bar app installed, is going to figure out whats going on what is going on, and save them all. (Hey, Hollywood - if this turns into a movie - I want my royalties)

semitones 2y ago
Brilliant!
dhosek 2y ago
The hardest thing for me to believe in The Martian was that one of the astronauts would have brought a book with a printed ASCII table in it.
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  I mean, why even use an ASCII table at that point? For initial comm you could just do A=0, B=1 etc. for initial comms (until you get to the point you want to reprogram the eeprom) you can have higher bandwidth communication.
  - hoten 2y ago
    If I remember correctly, the book addressed this. 26 division of a circle was too much for reliable determination of which sign the camera was pointing at, so 16 (hex) made the angles more workable. If we're talking efficiency, I wonder why he didn't consider Morse code. Well I guess that's easy, even though it's faster it takes a skilled operator to read it in realtime, and he had little time to write any individual bit of information down (cumbersomely writing in sand is slow)
    - Thorrez 2y ago
      You can't represent 26 possibilities with a single hex digit. So it'll require 2 hex digits. If you're going to require 2 digits, then that can be done with 2 decimal digits as well. So there's no need for hex, and no need for ascii tables. However, if you need more than just the 26 letters, e.g. if you also need numbers and/or punctuation, then ascii might be useful, and hex might be useful to encode ascii into 2 digits.
      - vasco 2y ago
        If I send you this: 48697468657265 Why do I need to send it to you 2 digits at a time? It's valid hex that converts to ascii, only 1 symbol at a time, which is how he communicated. He could've done it with just a card for 0 and another for 1 if he really wanted.
        Thorrez 2y ago
        I didn't say it needs to be sent 2 digits at a time. The points of my previous comment: * Ascii is only needed if we need to encode things other than just letters (or if case matters). * Hex is only better than decimal if hex allows the number of digits to be reduced. If we need to only encode 26 elements, then hex doesn't reduce the number of digits compared to decimal, so hex has no advantage over decimal in the 26-element case. Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal.
        vasco 2y ago
        > Hex is only better than decimal if hex allows the number of digits to be reduced. If we need to only encode 26 elements, then hex doesn't reduce the number of digits compared to decimal, so hex has no advantage over decimal in the 26-element case He had more than 26 things to encode, I believe he started with numbers, letters and a question mark. > Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal Using 0 or 1 decreases that to only 3 cards (including question mark), and increasing the safety margin to 120° on the setup he had. It'd take longer but be more robust.
    - unsupp0rted 2y ago
      Too bad he didn't know Hangul (Korean writing system). He could have managed to communicate well enough with half a dozen chars.
- frosted-flakes 2y ago
  It wasn't a book, it was on Johansen's laptop. And the ASCII was for communicating by pointing the camera on the mars rover, because it couldn't be positioned precisely enough for 26 different positions.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- artemiszx 2y ago
  I mean they had laptops; just for (unsigned char i = 0; i < 127; i++) { printf("%x: %c\n", i, i); }
  - Munksgaard 2y ago
    Or `man ascii`
    - ed_elliott_asc 2y ago
      Surely `spaceman ascii`
      - mrlonglong 2y ago
        $ spaceman ascii bash: spaceman: command not found
        kidneystereotyp 2y ago
        chatgpt how to fix bash: spaceman: command not found
  - IgorPartola 2y ago
    It’s a book. Explaining a lookup table is way easier for a reader than explaining this code snippet.
- elygre 2y ago
  I love how that’s the hardest thing to believe.
  - sudhirj 2y ago
    Why, wasn’t The Martian an example of hard sci-fi, a story that conforms strongly to the known laws of physics? Not necessarily probability, economics or politics, but hard sci-fi is written to be plausible.
    - simpaticoder 2y ago
      The story is enjoyable, but like most such tales is amounts to building a string of deadly obstacles for the protagonist and then giving him just enough to survive each one. (FWIW the least realistic step was the ship turning around to get him, because spaceships typically don't carry any extra fuel. But in general there were too many resources lying around for him to use, especially the unattended lift vehicle. The plutonium core and the potatoes were a nice touch, though.)
      - SonicScrub 2y ago
        It's been a while since I've read the book / seen the movie, but I believe the ship intercepted a resupply payload launched from earth as it was performing it's slingshot.
      - II2II 2y ago
        > FWIW the least realistic step was the ship turning around to get him, because spaceships typically don't carry any extra fuel. The turning around and returning to Mars bit may have been realistic. They would have needed fuel to get into Earth orbit. (That said, the timing to return to Mars in any sane trajectory would likely be off.) The real problem would be getting into Mars orbit at the end of the return journey.
    - II2II 2y ago
      Even hard science fiction takes liberties since it pushes the boundaries of science or engineering. It explores the plausible, rather than what has been accomplished. If it didn't do so, it would not differ all that much from regular fiction (i.e. the story may be made up, but it is anchored in everyday reality). As for the ASCII table, I wouldn't be surprised if it is one of the most commonly reproduced data tables in print and I would be surprised if it wasn't the mostly commonly reproduced table digitally. Virtually every *ix system will have a copy of it. The documentation for most development tools will probably have it. All you need is someone technically inclined in your life, which you will almost certainly have on a mission to Mars, and you will likely have a copy of an ASCII table (whether anyone knows it is there or not).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ffsm8 2y ago
> Hey, Hollywood - if this turns into a movie - I want my royalties We already have precident on that topic via that short story about the reverse isekai airplane carrier to ancient Rome that was written on Reddit in early 2010s. By writing the original on a social media platform you've effectively given full copyright to this company. If royalties need to be paid, they'd be paid to yc, not you
- dartos 2y ago
  Tho most likely they wouldn’t pay out any royalties and if there is legal action, they’ll just count it against the profits of the movie and record the whole thing as a wash and pay no taxes and no royalties.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > We already have precident on that topic via that short story about the reverse isekai airplane carrier to ancient Rome that was written on Reddit in early 2010s. ... do you mean precedent of a scifi premise from social media being turned into a movie? or the precedent of a piece of media using a piss-tank's levels as a means of communication?
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    I meant the precedent of wherever he'd be able to get royalties for something he wrote on a social media website. you're giving full copyright to the social media website you're posting on. If someone wanted to buy a licence to use this - whatever it might be - the discussion would be between the social media platform and the licensee. the original author of the work would not have any stake in that theoretical situation. If you were wondering which specific case I'm referring to, ForHackernews linked to the wiki article. there is a small note on the licensing issue at the end there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509955 From what I remember, he had gotten a WB offer - which ultimately didn't pan out because a licensing agreeming couldn't occur. He'd have had to rewrite the story off-reddit for them to be able to license it. And that never happened. (Well, he did rewrite it - but probably took too long, so the window of opportunity had already closed and it was never made into an actual movie)
voxelghost 2y ago
Okay, so it seems ^this is going to be my most upvoted comment on HN, by an order of magnitude. Who would have thunk...
ljm 2y ago
Communications broke down, but their bladders didn't. Danny Boyle - 28 Lightyears Later.
speed_spread 2y ago
There's also the scenario where a pattern of intelligence is found in the noise from the life support sensors telemetry, halfway between Poltergeist and Contact.

semitones 2y ago

Brilliant!

dhosek 2y ago

The hardest thing for me to believe in The Martian was that one of the astronauts would have brought a book with a printed ASCII table in it.

dclowd9901 2y ago
I mean, why even use an ASCII table at that point? For initial comm you could just do A=0, B=1 etc. for initial comms (until you get to the point you want to reprogram the eeprom) you can have higher bandwidth communication.
- hoten 2y ago
  If I remember correctly, the book addressed this. 26 division of a circle was too much for reliable determination of which sign the camera was pointing at, so 16 (hex) made the angles more workable. If we're talking efficiency, I wonder why he didn't consider Morse code. Well I guess that's easy, even though it's faster it takes a skilled operator to read it in realtime, and he had little time to write any individual bit of information down (cumbersomely writing in sand is slow)
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    You can't represent 26 possibilities with a single hex digit. So it'll require 2 hex digits. If you're going to require 2 digits, then that can be done with 2 decimal digits as well. So there's no need for hex, and no need for ascii tables. However, if you need more than just the 26 letters, e.g. if you also need numbers and/or punctuation, then ascii might be useful, and hex might be useful to encode ascii into 2 digits.
    - vasco 2y ago
      If I send you this: 48697468657265 Why do I need to send it to you 2 digits at a time? It's valid hex that converts to ascii, only 1 symbol at a time, which is how he communicated. He could've done it with just a card for 0 and another for 1 if he really wanted.
      - Thorrez 2y ago
        I didn't say it needs to be sent 2 digits at a time. The points of my previous comment: * Ascii is only needed if we need to encode things other than just letters (or if case matters). * Hex is only better than decimal if hex allows the number of digits to be reduced. If we need to only encode 26 elements, then hex doesn't reduce the number of digits compared to decimal, so hex has no advantage over decimal in the 26-element case. Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal.
        vasco 2y ago
        > Hex is only better than decimal if hex allows the number of digits to be reduced. If we need to only encode 26 elements, then hex doesn't reduce the number of digits compared to decimal, so hex has no advantage over decimal in the 26-element case He had more than 26 things to encode, I believe he started with numbers, letters and a question mark. > Using just 0 or 1 will increase the number of digits needed, so has a clear disadvantage compared to hex or decimal Using 0 or 1 decreases that to only 3 cards (including question mark), and increasing the safety margin to 120° on the setup he had. It'd take longer but be more robust.
  - unsupp0rted 2y ago
    Too bad he didn't know Hangul (Korean writing system). He could have managed to communicate well enough with half a dozen chars.
frosted-flakes 2y ago
It wasn't a book, it was on Johansen's laptop. And the ASCII was for communicating by pointing the camera on the mars rover, because it couldn't be positioned precisely enough for 26 different positions.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
artemiszx 2y ago
I mean they had laptops; just for (unsigned char i = 0; i < 127; i++) { printf("%x: %c\n", i, i); }
- Munksgaard 2y ago
  Or `man ascii`
  - ed_elliott_asc 2y ago
    Surely `spaceman ascii`
    - mrlonglong 2y ago
      $ spaceman ascii bash: spaceman: command not found
      - kidneystereotyp 2y ago
        chatgpt how to fix bash: spaceman: command not found
- IgorPartola 2y ago
  It’s a book. Explaining a lookup table is way easier for a reader than explaining this code snippet.
elygre 2y ago
I love how that’s the hardest thing to believe.
- sudhirj 2y ago
  Why, wasn’t The Martian an example of hard sci-fi, a story that conforms strongly to the known laws of physics? Not necessarily probability, economics or politics, but hard sci-fi is written to be plausible.
  - simpaticoder 2y ago
    The story is enjoyable, but like most such tales is amounts to building a string of deadly obstacles for the protagonist and then giving him just enough to survive each one. (FWIW the least realistic step was the ship turning around to get him, because spaceships typically don't carry any extra fuel. But in general there were too many resources lying around for him to use, especially the unattended lift vehicle. The plutonium core and the potatoes were a nice touch, though.)
    - SonicScrub 2y ago
      It's been a while since I've read the book / seen the movie, but I believe the ship intercepted a resupply payload launched from earth as it was performing it's slingshot.
    - II2II 2y ago
      > FWIW the least realistic step was the ship turning around to get him, because spaceships typically don't carry any extra fuel. The turning around and returning to Mars bit may have been realistic. They would have needed fuel to get into Earth orbit. (That said, the timing to return to Mars in any sane trajectory would likely be off.) The real problem would be getting into Mars orbit at the end of the return journey.
  - II2II 2y ago
    Even hard science fiction takes liberties since it pushes the boundaries of science or engineering. It explores the plausible, rather than what has been accomplished. If it didn't do so, it would not differ all that much from regular fiction (i.e. the story may be made up, but it is anchored in everyday reality). As for the ASCII table, I wouldn't be surprised if it is one of the most commonly reproduced data tables in print and I would be surprised if it wasn't the mostly commonly reproduced table digitally. Virtually every *ix system will have a copy of it. The documentation for most development tools will probably have it. All you need is someone technically inclined in your life, which you will almost certainly have on a mission to Mars, and you will likely have a copy of an ASCII table (whether anyone knows it is there or not).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ffsm8 2y ago

> Hey, Hollywood - if this turns into a movie - I want my royalties We already have precident on that topic via that short story about the reverse isekai airplane carrier to ancient Rome that was written on Reddit in early 2010s. By writing the original on a social media platform you've effectively given full copyright to this company. If royalties need to be paid, they'd be paid to yc, not you

dartos 2y ago
Tho most likely they wouldn’t pay out any royalties and if there is legal action, they’ll just count it against the profits of the movie and record the whole thing as a wash and pay no taxes and no royalties.
pavel_lishin 2y ago
> We already have precident on that topic via that short story about the reverse isekai airplane carrier to ancient Rome that was written on Reddit in early 2010s. ... do you mean precedent of a scifi premise from social media being turned into a movie? or the precedent of a piece of media using a piss-tank's levels as a means of communication?
- ffsm8 2y ago
  I meant the precedent of wherever he'd be able to get royalties for something he wrote on a social media website. you're giving full copyright to the social media website you're posting on. If someone wanted to buy a licence to use this - whatever it might be - the discussion would be between the social media platform and the licensee. the original author of the work would not have any stake in that theoretical situation. If you were wondering which specific case I'm referring to, ForHackernews linked to the wiki article. there is a small note on the licensing issue at the end there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509955 From what I remember, he had gotten a WB offer - which ultimately didn't pan out because a licensing agreeming couldn't occur. He'd have had to rewrite the story off-reddit for them to be able to license it. And that never happened. (Well, he did rewrite it - but probably took too long, so the window of opportunity had already closed and it was never made into an actual movie)

voxelghost 2y ago

Okay, so it seems ^this is going to be my most upvoted comment on HN, by an order of magnitude. Who would have thunk...

ljm 2y ago

Communications broke down, but their bladders didn't. Danny Boyle - 28 Lightyears Later.

speed_spread 2y ago

There's also the scenario where a pattern of intelligence is found in the noise from the life support sensors telemetry, halfway between Poltergeist and Contact.