News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by simonh on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @05:40PM (#32757332)
You can't take say Moore's Law for chip tech and slap it on to radio tech. They're fundamentally different physical processes. There are limits to radio transmission and reception bandwidth and range due to the basic physics that you can't end run. The inverse square law is a harsh master, for any given level of technology a transmitter 100x closer is going to have a 10,000x advantage however you slice it.

What they might be able to do is expand this to something like limited texting, or maybe down the line even non-realtime voice messaging.

Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by jorvi on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @06:46PM (#32758164)
We are still able to have two-way communication with both Voyagers.

Google’s Lyra codec can already get down to 3Kb/s and be reasonably audible. It’s not a stretch to imagine within a few years we’ll be able to push that to below 1Kb/s.

Taking those two things together, I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume at least text and voice are within reach.

Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by jfoutz on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @07:58PM (#32759036)
Stable diffusion, backwards on the device, targeting a photo. send photos with only the prompt.
Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by duskwuff on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @08:43PM (#32759503)
Reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's "evocations", as mentioned in A Fire Upon the Deep:

> The screen showed a color image with high resolution. Looking at it carefully, one realized the thing was a poor evocation…. Kjet recognized Owner Limmende and Jan Skrits, her chief of staff, but they looked several years out of style. Ølvira [the ship] was matching old video with the transmitted animation cues. The actual communication channel was less that four thousand bits per second; Central was taking no chances.

> [...]

> The picture was crisp and clear, but when the figures moved it was with cartoonlike awkwardness. And some of the faces belonged to people Kjet knew had been transferred […] The processors here on the Ølvira were taking the narrow-band signal from Fleet Central, fleshing it out with detailed (and out of date) background and evoking the image shown.

Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by oceanplexian on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @09:59PM (#32760102)
Sounds a lot like DALL-E plus a finely tuned training database on both ends could create this sort super-compression if we wanted to. I could imagine having a crisp, real-time (But artificial) 4K video conference at a few kb/s.
Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by wmf on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @11:24PM (#32760781)
Nvidia is already working on this.
Re:Globalstar SEC filing, Apple to use 85% of its satellite ... by duskwuff on Thursday September 08, 2022 @01:08AM (#32761417)
The novel I'm quoting was written in 1992. :)