this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 260 points 8 months ago (4 children)

No flying machine will ever reach New York from Paris.

One of the Wright brothers said that. It's actually my favorite quote because it always reminds me we have no idea what the fuck we're wrong about.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 274 points 8 months ago (6 children)

No flying machine will ever reach New York from Paris.

googles

Interestingly, when he wrote that, it was part of a larger quote saying virtually the same thing that you are, just over a century ago:

Wilbur in the Cairo, Illinois, Bulletin, March 25, 1909

No airship will ever fly from New York to Paris. That seems to me to be impossible. What limits the flight is the motor. No known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping, and you can’t be sure of finding the proper winds for soaring. The airship will always be a special messenger, never a load-carrier. But the history of civilization has usually shown that every new invention has brought in its train new needs it can satisfy, and so what the airship will eventually be used for is probably what we can least predict at the present.

[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 128 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Thank goodness computers are never wrong. :-P

[–] Communist@lemmy.ml 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hey, they always do exactly as they're told!

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hrm, in that case, now I wonder how they are ever correct!?:-P

[–] FrederikNJS@lemm.ee 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As a Software Engineer, I ask myself that question several times per day.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 8 points 8 months ago

Bc chips are as dumb as rocks, but really really really good at repetition:-).

img

[–] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Easy, think about who decides whether or not they're correct.

Again, humans.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 1 points 8 months ago

For now... except managers don't want to actually think, yet do want to be in control of even the tiniest aspects of every single fucking thing (see e.g. Boeing planes literally falling out of the sky, against the wishes of the engineers bc the managers figured that this way of skipping maintenance and then covering that truth from federal safety commissioners was "better"... for the sake of their profits ofc), so how soon until their unthinking need to "feel like" they are in control leads them to using computers to control the people, without even those humans who hold the admin rights ever making any conscious decisions?

I suspect that a thinking computer may be correct far more often than an unthinking human.:-D

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

And thank goodness it's not nearly impossible to convince a computer that it isn't correct when you don't have admin rights.

sudo you're a fucking idiot, computer

[–] jonkenator@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

It was a very fitting time to be wrong lol

[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 1 points 8 months ago

You were wrong, which proves your point correct. Good job being wrong and right at the same time.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Oh, and to provide numbers:

https://www.distance.to/New-York/Paris

That's 5,837.07 km.

As of the moment, the longest flight by distance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Atlantic_GlobalFlyer

In February 2006, Fossett flew the GlobalFlyer for the longest aircraft flight distance in history: 25,766 miles (41,466 km).

That's 7.1 times the Paris-to-New-York flight distance.

As for time:

No known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping...

The longest flight by time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager

The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base's 15,000 foot (4,600 m) runway in the Mojave Desert on December 14, 1986, and ended 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds later on December 23, setting a flight endurance record.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 13 points 8 months ago

the longest aircraft flight distance in history: 25,766 miles (41,466 km)

That's 800 miles (1,400 km) longer than the circumference of the Earth. Humans are a trip.

[–] VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago

Plus X-37B has flown round the earth for two and a half years on its longest flight. I know it's not really what he was thinking about as it's launched in space from a rocket in orbit but then that just adds even more to the notion tech advancement can be almost impossible to predict.

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

“Brought in its train” what an interesting phrase, do people still say this? Is it the same as “in its wake” we use today?

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It appears to be meant like “retinue” or “followers.”

[–] I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

“retinue”

ret·i·nue

/ˈretnˌo͞o/

noun: retinue; plural noun: retinues

a group of advisers, assistants, or others accompanying an important person.
"the rock star's retinue of security guards and personal cooks"
[–] FilterItOut@thelemmy.club 9 points 8 months ago

Yes. Think of weddings. The thing trailing behind the 'fancy' ones is called the train.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Wilbur clearly didn't know about in-flight refueling.

It also makes me wonder if trans-atlantic gliding is a feat that could be feasibly attempted with modern technology.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 5 points 8 months ago

He also isn't talking about airplanes, but airships. Sure plenty of planes make the journey every day, but zero airships do because they really are quite useless for it. Obviously he was wrong becauae a few airships did end up making Atlantic crossings, but they were slow, cramped, and dangerous compsred to ocean liners.

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

So context matter, you say. This is revolutionary! But it will never catch on.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

At a computer trade show in 1981, Bill Gates supposedly uttered this statement, in defense of the just-introduced IBM PC's 640KB usable RAM limit: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 55 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That quote was in the context of the 1981 personal computer market, and in that context is correct.

It’s like a game company CEO saying 12GB of video ram is enough in 2024 so we don’t all need an RTX 4090.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

12GB of video ram is enough in 2024

And then Stable Diffusion showed up

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Im getting away with my 8gb for now.

Its the language/text stuff that really needs like 30gb GPUs.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Im getting away with my 8gb for now.

I don't think that you can do the current XL models with 8GB, even for low-resolution images. Maybe with --lowvram or something.

I've got a 24GB RX 7900 XT and would render higher resolution images if I had the VRAM -- yeah, you can sometimes sort of get a similar effect by upscaling in tiles, but it's not really a replacement. And I am confident that even if they put a consumer card out with 128GB, someone will figure out some new clever extension that does something fascinating and useful...as long as one can devote a little more memory to it...

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I do XL all the time, at about 30-45 seconds per image. 8gb is surprisingly enough for SDXL, and I run like 7gb models with 3-6 Lora on top.

[–] ABCDE@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago

I think the context was for computers at the time.

[–] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That one is apocryphal if I remember correctly, but even if he did say it, at the time it was pretty much true.

[–] kelargo@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

And 100 years later, in one generation, humans land on the moon.

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Scientists in the 1800s also proclaimed we figured everything out and science was completed.

[–] bleistift2@feddit.de 41 points 8 months ago (3 children)

*1900s. Max Planck famously pondered whether he should pursue physics or music and was told by his professor that Physics was “done except for a few minor details”. Planck then went on to invent quantum physics to screw over students the world over.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-56594-6_11

[–] ech@lemm.ee 14 points 8 months ago

"except for a few minor details". Understatement of the millennium.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 7 points 8 months ago

Planck then went on to invent quantum physics to screw over students the world over.

lol

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

Thank you for the correction! That's such a great little story