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CD players skipped during large physical jolts was because there was no technology that could store even a small part of the CD in a memory buffer. CDs were bigger than hard drives, you couldn't just buy a chip to hold enough data to wait for the laser to start reading again.
In 1982, the Commodore64 cost an inflation-adjusted $1,600 - and had 64KB of RAM.
A compact disc outputs 176KB. Per second.
The CD is basically a temporal aberration and should not have existed at all.
A compact disc outputs 176KB. Per second.
The CD is basically a temporal aberration and should not have existed at all.
That's 1411000 bits flipping per second. Every second. 74 minutes. 4400 seconds. In 1982.
Basically 40 years ago.
The simplified and abstracted units we use to talk about technology obfuscate facts of operational magnitude and timescales our minds can not biologically fathom.
Basically 40 years ago.
The simplified and abstracted units we use to talk about technology obfuscate facts of operational magnitude and timescales our minds can not biologically fathom.
If you stretched one second of CD data transfer out to instead last a year, there would be one unit of information every 22 seconds every hour every day noon and night sleeping or awake.
Cosmologists can tell you how big a galaxy is, engineers can tell you how often a CPU clocks, but there is no cosmologist that understands how big a galaxy is, or engineer that understands how fast a computer is.
Note: CDs don't store data 1:1 it's all encoded for error correction and has lookup tables, but I don't understand that very well so I'm glossing over it and am just looking at the resulting data rate, not the physical laser pickup.
See linked tweet for physical data rate discussion.
CDs also encode data by the TRANSITION into and out of pits, it doesn't read any 1s and 0s on the disc they don't exist there. You can't even look at it with a microscope and write them out. https://twitter.com/bob_zim/status/1307887618198249475
CDs also encode data by the TRANSITION into and out of pits, it doesn't read any 1s and 0s on the disc they don't exist there. You can't even look at it with a microscope and write them out. https://twitter.com/bob_zim/status/1307887618198249475
Seriously everything low-level in electronics isn't even low-level there's entire layers of abstraction you don't even know yet.
Never look into how an SSD actually works. Cell phone radios are built by betting against God's kingdom.
If society resets we're 100% screwed forever.
Never look into how an SSD actually works. Cell phone radios are built by betting against God's kingdom.
If society resets we're 100% screwed forever.
Also cable internet works by encoding your downloads into video packets.
Everything is turtles and turtles go all the way down. You sit on a throne of lies.
http://www.hit.bme.hu/~jakab/edu/litr/Access/DOCSIS/DOCSIS_basics_IEEEComMag_2001March_00910608.pdf
Everything is turtles and turtles go all the way down. You sit on a throne of lies.
http://www.hit.bme.hu/~jakab/edu/litr/Access/DOCSIS/DOCSIS_basics_IEEEComMag_2001March_00910608.pdf
