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.
once in college my friend asked me to come along on a date she wasn’t comfortable with because she knew that I would step in and ruin the mood on purpose if she gave me the signal that she wanted out
I came along, it was awkward, she gave the signal, and I immediately dumped a glass of ice water over my head and said “oh no looks like you have to drive me home immediately to prevent hypothermia” but then she and her bad date thought this was so startling and funny that it broke the tension and got them talking. and then I had to sit around for the rest of their date dripping water and shivering because she decided she was enjoying herself.